Nissan LEAF Sales In Japan Up 17% in 2013

next year 15k seems good 🙂 another 15% increase.

I think if there was some type of doubling of electric car range from 80 to 150 miles on a charge it should trigger a 50% raise in cars sold.

Not sure how many of you read Japanese, but here’s an interesting tidbit from Nikkei. I think InsideEV should do an article on this. http://www.nikkei.com/article/DGXNASDD1405I_U3A210C1000000/ Google translate does sorta okay job of translating this, except EV charging “stations” translates as “groups” for some reasons. At any rate, the government budgeted 1000,0000,0000 yen – 976 million USD at today’s rate – for EV (Chademo) infrastructure and financial aid for EV purchases. They goal is to up the count of Chademo stations from “only” 1,400 now to 35,700. Since the number is very specific, it appears they’ve at least done preliminary studies on those sites. The hope is that 35k quick charging stations along with range improvement in the next Leaf will make the it as practical as gas cars. Nissan guy is quoted saying “This may be out last chance”, meaning that public support for pure BEV will falter if this investment doesn’t bring the results. The budget being discussed here is what amounts to federal budget of the US, and I believe this is not a hoax now that it’s on Nikkei…sort of WSJ of Japan. So I know this money will be spent over next couple calendar years. But… Read more »