Nissan Motor Co. Chief Operating Officer Toshiyuki Shiga poses for photographers with the automaker’s “Leaf” zero-emission electric vehicle and its recharging cable in Yokohama, Japan. (AP Photo/Shizuo Kambayashi)
Associated Press | Nissan Motor Co. said Tuesday its new electric car will cost just over
$25,000 in the U.S., a move that could force rivals to lower prices on
similar vehicles.
The Leaf, a four-door hatchback due in showrooms late this year, will
have a base price of $32,780, but buyers can get a $7,500 electric
vehicle tax credit, Nissan said.
The price tag puts the Leaf, which can go up to 100 miles (160
kilometers) on a single charge from a home outlet, within reach of
mainstream car buyers, and it also will force competitors to respond
when they introduce their cars.
General Motors Co., which also will begin selling its Chevrolet Volt rechargeable electric car later this year, said that it will look at Nissan’s pricing before announcing the Volt’s price closer to its December sales date.
“I think it’s fair to say their pricing, it won’t overwhelm, but it will have some influence on our pricing decision,” said GM spokesman Rob Peterson.
GM was looking to price the Volt, which can go 40 miles (65 kilometers) on full electricity before a small gas engine kicks in to provide power, around $35,000. It would cost $27,500 with the tax credit.
But GM executives have said they are trying to lower the price as they begin building models at a Detroit factory.
Other competitors, such as Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler Group LLC, also plan to sell fully electric cars, but those will come out after the Volt and Leaf hit showrooms in December. The Volt and Leaf are the first two electric cars to go on sale that will appeal to the mass market.
Orders in the U.S. start April 20 and Nissan is aiming for 25,000 orders by December.
Nissan says the Leaf will cost 3.76 million yen ($40,000) in Japan. It will price the car lower in the U.S. because it wants to sell more of them in that market. The automaker says it is confident it can still make money at that price.
But Erich Merkle, president of the consulting company Autoconomy.com in Grand Rapids, Michigan, said Nissan may be deliberately setting the price low and may even lose money to establish itself as the market leader.
GM maintains that the Volt is a better value than the Leaf because drivers don’t have to worry about running out of electricity. The car’s gas engine gives it nearly unlimited range, GM says.
Although the Volt can travel farther, GM still has to compete with the Leaf on price, especially among drivers who don’t drive that far or have a second car for long-distance travel, Merkle said.
“They’re going to find themselves going up against the Leaf, and being compared to that probably quite a bit,” he said.
But Aaron Bragman, an auto industry analyst with IHS Global Insight in Troy, Michigan, said the Leaf and Volt will compete for different customers. He said the Leaf will appeal mainly to suburban commuters — a smaller market — because of its 100-mile (160-km) range limit.
In larger cities, plugging in the car to recharge becomes a problem for apartment dwellers, he said.
“The Volt, in particular, has a much larger appeal,” he said.
Bragman sees the cars as the beginning of automakers trying to determine how to equip and market electric cars.
“They’re still trying to figure out what’s going to sell and what’s not going to sell,” he said.
Once again; Japan will undersell their US counterparts to get the market share and force their competitors out of business. The same thing happened back in the ’70s and 80s with TVs; they sold them below cost; and put every US TV maker out of business. They use unfair trade practices; like China does; but us stupid American have no loyalty and buy whatever is cheaper without ever thinking of the consequences. Also; GM should now go even lower with their price for the Volt; assuming theyre not too stupid and arrogant to do so.
If American automakers made a car that was as solid as the ones from Japan, perhaps more of us would take a chance on an American made car. It is a better product that gives them market share.
Hey Goose… If you want to spend 3-5k extra out of your pocket to keep American autos strong go right ahead. I however dont have that extra cash to blow.
The price of the four-door hatchback falls to $25,280 after a $7,500 federal tax credit for electric vehicles.
$25,280 IS NOT AFFORDABLE!!!
James is right, $15,000 would be truly affordable.
Why do the tax payers have to kick in $7500 dollars? This country is broke so Obama will print a bunch of money and watch inflation take center stage.
The credit should be on American cars only…
Well, Goose, us “stupid American(s)” love affordable/reliable items. The vast majority of the time, that will beat out “loyalty”. And in our wonderful free enterprise/capitalistic society, it’s all about competition. We love that, too. But we whine when an American company loses that “competition”. We can’t have it both ways, folks.
Anyway, I love this…the future is on its way…affordable electric vehicles. In all honesty, I don’t care who makes them…if they’re affordable and reliable, I’ll buy it.
Frankly, I’d rather go with the Volt. It’s not much more expensive than the Leaf and you get a lot extra — a bigger vehicle with more passenger room; a far more practical power train; and as far as I can tell a fundamentally more durable design for the battery pack as well. Added to which the Leaf has no gasoline motor, which, on a car that takes 16 hours to charge off a standard outlet and only goes up to 100 miles on one charge, is a big, big problem.
So bash Detroit and the unions all you want; the fact is the Leaf is an inadequate product.
Why did Mr. Dubya give tax credit to people who bought HUMMERS?
DUH!
They are so affordable I may buy one for each day of the week – BULLSHIP!!
OK now, say you buy a Ford Focus for $16,000 and put $100 of gas in per month. If you bought the Nissan, it would take 7.5 years to break even with the Ford.
It’s progress, but $32k for what is otherwise a $16k hatchback doesn’t mean it’s ready for prime time, and a business model built on tax credits isn’t sustainable. I don’t understand why manufacturers aren’t pursing futuristic powertrains in more premium vehicles, where there’s a lot more wiggle room with the price tag. Since the typical luxury car clocks in on the wrong side of 4000lbs they could use the torque. And the upwardly mobile eco-posers who went with a Prius to impress their friends are painfully aware that during the other 99% of the time they are driving what is in fact a pretty awful car.
That zero emission sign is a joke. The electricity that car uses comes from a power plant burning, most likely, coal.
There is no free lunch.
unless you are looking for a car that doesn’t accelerate and go out of control on its own.
@Crest – Electricity is not free. If you use a gas price of $2.75 per gallon and a price of 15¢ per kilowatt hour for electricity, you will find that the operating cost per hundred miles is greater for the electric car than an equivalent small gas vehicle by 17%.
Again, no free lunch.
That may be true, Bill, but power plant emissions are much more strictly regulated and controlled than that of emissions from individual cars, plus the rate of energy consumption to emissions is likely much cleaner from a power plant, and finally, in Illinois, half our electricity is generated from nuclear power plants, which obviously do not have the same harmful greenhouse emissions cars or coal plants do.
Nobody thinks this is the final step in freeing ourselves from dirty energy production, but it is a major step in the right direction.
Couple misconceptions above.
First, Nissan products are not more reliable than comporable GM or Ford products and have not been for going on five or six years.
Heck, even Toyota is falling below GM and Ford.
Second, the electric car tax credit started during the GW adminstration when the Republicans still had the majority. It is not an Obama ‘giveaway’ whatevet that is supposed to mean.
Austin,
Dubya didn’t give tax credits to PEOPLE who bought hummers. They gave tax credits to BUSINESSES who purchase vehicles weighing over 6,000 lbs. The goal of this was to increase the purchasing of very expensive trucks that businesses buy. Unfortunately the accountants quickly figured out that purchasing a new suburban or a new hummer for the boss instead of the sedans many of them were previously driving was much cheaper over the life of the vehicle.
My business used to buy new trucks every 175,000 miles or so. Now we are keeping trucks to 225,000 miles or more. This is bad news for detroit, bad news for us, bad news for business who used to buy our used trucks, bad news for people who cant afford these vehicles new ($60,000+) and bad news for the environmentalists because we aren’t buying the new trucks with dpm filters that meet the new emissions standards.
Hey Goose, why should buyers be loyal to American car companies when those companies are not loyal to Americans?
Enough with these foreign cars already. Focus on American cars!
My goodness if its foreign and ugly people will buy it.
works out to about 30 cents a gallon of gasoline equivalent when compared to a 30MPG car and $3/gallon. really pretty incredible. (8 hour charge time x 12c/KWH = 96 cents to charge the thing, call it a dollar, and it’ll take you 100 miles, = a penny a mile. $3/g x g/30m = 10 cents a mile. if they can get this cost down another 10K, they’ll have a revolution.
Why should we taxpayers give Nissan an extra $7,500.00 for selling us their cars and pocketing the profits to spend in support of Japan.
Tax credits paid for by the taxpayers only go back to the taxpayers via the American owned companies OK?
let us not forget that it will also put a huge crimp in the arab countries if this thing really takes off. that alone makes me want to buy one
“Electricity is not free. If you use a gas price of $2.75 per gallon and a price of 15¢ per kilowatt hour for electricity, you will find that the operating cost per hundred miles is greater for the electric …”
OK, the numbers are: about 120,000 Btu in a gallon of gasoline, and 3414 Btu in one kwh of electricity. In other words, the energy in a gallon of gasoline is about 35kwh– which would cost you $5.27 if you bought it as electricity.
BUT, the efficiency of an electric motor is typically 90% whereas the peak efficiency of an internal combustion engine is about 30%, and, you may be able to buy electricity for well under $.15/kwh if you buy it off-peak.
NONETHELESS, enviros might at least realize that if electric cars (or plug-in hybrids) become popular, all that extra demand is not going to come from the wind, or from solar (neither of which is suitable for baseload, or can be developed to sufficient capacity).
It’ll come from nuclear. Or, it won’t be available in sufficient quantity and cost for use in electric vehicles.
What is American car now….FORD/ GM vehicle made in Mexico or a Toyota/ KIA made in the US?
BTW I proudly drive a 8 year FORD Explorer with no issues and also a 2 year old CAMRY with no issue
i’m optimistic on solar. right now, it’s an R&D problem. they just broke through the equivalency barrier, now they just have to scale. nuclear is politically impossible because nobody wants the waste in their backyards. the next big tycoon in america will be a solar innovator. i really think solar is the next big opportunity for america to shine. we always solve the big problems like this, so electric cars are half the solution, and a good clean electricity supply is the other half. both will be solved, and someone is going to make a fortune, and we all win (as capitalism is supposed to work).
Japanese show Americans how it’s done again. To think William Edwards Demming was laughed at years ago, but the Japanese swore by his every word. And, another example of a country with UNIVERSAL HEALTHCARE. And it’s so bad their average life expectancy is greater then Americans.
I have not forgotten the Chevy Vega that my mom bought years ago. That piece of S**t broke down on the way home from the dealership and never ran right. Of course this was before lemon laws and Chevy refused to acknowledge that they had made a piece of S**t. Thats why I’ll buy a Nissan and tell the Volt to go to hell.
I am really exited about getting an electric car. I hope that they are as reliable as they are economical.
What are the maintenance costs?
ok, I have to jump in here, because your numbers are very wrong… I HAVE an all electric car, so I can give you ‘real’ figures to work with. Mine is a home converted car, uses a DC motor and 12 golf cart batteries. Performance is almost identical to when running on gas, but range is of course limited. The cost per mile with lead-acid batteries is almost identical to gas, except there is no engine maintenance… I am about to switch to large format LiFePO4 cells, and the cost per mile will be LOWER and the performance will be better with less weight. The numbers:
- the car used to get 40 miles per gallon of gas
- now gets just about 40 miles per ‘charge’, which is just about 10kWhr of electricity… at a retail rate of .09 is $1 of electricity. The operational cost of the battery back works out to about $1500/700cycles= about $2 per cycle. so yes lead-acid batteries are about a wash.
however, the Li pack I am installing, while costing more up front ($4500 delivered), should last 3000 cycles, which brings the cost down to about $1.50 per cycle, plus the $1 of elec. is cheaper.
In my case I also invested in PV panels on my house, so my electricity I actually get PAID $.13/kWhr to produce when the utility co buys it from me for their renewable energy portfolio.
….so electric cars ARE at a financially justifiable poit, as long as the limited range fits your needs. The DOT says that 70% of all vehicles have a daily use under 50 miles, so electric cars WILL fit a lot of average needs….
why on earth would we want the credit online on american cars? so the unions can be more corrupt or so that poor quality vehicles with horrific resale litter the streets? no wonder why american car companies are in such bad shape – it’s logic like this.
“great idea! lets LIMIT competition” – that is sure to make the cars better.
“The price of the four-door hatchback falls to $25,280 after a $7,500 federal tax credit for electric vehicles. $25,280 IS NOT AFFORDABLE!”
Correct, for many people it’s not. And … that $7,500 federal tax “credit” does not appear from some mythological government money machine. It has to be either taken from taxpayers, or added to the crushing national debt. Yessir, we really need to be “more like France” … whose national debt is around 40% of GNP. And note, for the better heeled “green” advocates in need of a larger vehicle, they can pass up their preferred Volvo or Benz and buy the very hi tech Chevy Volt. Await with great interest to see them lined up at the showroom doors.
“And, another example of a country with UNIVERSAL HEALTHCARE.” Indeed, and that would be yet another one drowning in red ink, along the lines of the fabled Japanese rail system that is in fact hugely in debt, very large unfunded pension obligations and operating expense gap despite massive government (read: taxpayer) subsidies. Surely, another model the US must emulate.
PS- For those who bother to actually study such things, the Deming lapse has been closed or very nearly so in US manufacturing for decades. The US was not as bad as some partisans claimed, nor the Asians as perfect. The Europeans, well they’ve got problems of their own.
Electric cars are still too new, there needs to be more testing involved because through time battery loses its charge and can explode if not properly cooled. But of course from all makers books, thats all been tested and accounted for right….WRONG…each driving condition is different, especially with the four seasons. So dont be quick to jump into one, unless you want to be recalled…
Ken, electric cars actually pre-date gasoline…. the marketing problem has always been the limited range.
Where do you get your information that batteries explode? Certainly none of the new LiFePO4 explode…. and are WAY more stable than a tank full of gasoline!
the ford ev1 was a great success, it used lithium ion batteries and could travel something like 200+ miles. capitalism is holding back true potential of electric cars
Since when is 25K affordable ????
with each car sold, an individual makes a decision to send $7500 dollars of other peoples money (taxpayers) overseas to the Japanese. Great. Just effing great!
And, the Japanese are selling the car below cost, too!
Exactly Tony…. An all electric car *could* cost no more than a similar gas car; The electric motor, controller, and charger cost LESS than a ICE motor and have way fewer parts to assemble. Adding in the batteries probably brings the entire drive system up very close to the same as the ICE engine, exhaust, fuel tank, radiator, and other stuff that is not required in an all-electric.
The current designs use AC motors/controllers, and a very expensive format of Li batteries. The cost could be brought down significantly with DC motor/controller, and larger format Li cells…. I’d bet a nice little car with a 100 mile rage could retail for $15k-$20k nd still have a profit margin.
“tomking | March 30, 2010 2:43 PM capitalism is holding back true potential of electric cars” Oh yes, the ‘who killed the electric car’ nonsense. The neat thing about myths, or particularly conspiracies, is that everyone has to be, and stay, in the game. Otherwise the cover story gets blown. So, the evil capitalists have stonewalled pure electrics, or until very recently, plug in hybrids have they? That would also include the Europeans and Japanese, yes? Truth is, the batteris weren’t there, nor were the electronics and neither was the market. Even today, ask Honda how much they clear off every Insight sold. Meanwhile, what prevented Ralphie Nader from bringing fire to mankind all those years? Or Al Gore, to use his brilliant financial acumen and vast fortune? Or George Soros from becoming a new age Tucker? Seems that talk, or partisan rhetoric, is cheap. Nope, no takers. As Bob Lutz put it a few years ago “If you have the long range battery, my office door is open. Just be ready to back it up with validation data and warrenties, not some science fair project needing billions to maybe be able to commercialize”.
Tim: “The vast majority of the time, that will beat out “loyalty”. ”
And then you’ll turn around and blame politicians, CEOs and anyone other than those actually responsible for the market conditions. The fact is, people like you want everything under the sun for as cheap as possible, but it’s everyone else’s fault when those desires actually have an effect on the market–All the benefits without any responsibility. It’s pathetic that people like you have blame to assign to everyone for Americans being out of work, but posts like yours and similar ones express a clear disdain and disrespect for American workers. Drop the charade that you actually care about anyone in this nation other than yourself. And YOU have the nerve to talk about others “wanting to have it both ways.”
Hypocrite.
Andy…. no reason not to power them with ‘green’ electricity, miine is…. with PV.
‘Buy American’ …. hhhmmm, most of the small, fuel efficient cars ‘made’ by American companies are manufactured in either Mexico or Canada … Nissans are manufactured in SC and the parts manufacturers are located in Illinois and Kentucky … say again ??!!
Normally I would buy American, but after the bankrupt GM which was bailed out by the US taxpayer didnt get concessions from the bloated corrupt UAW and the recent assassination attempt by our degenerate Congress against Toyota, Im pulling for the Japs. Afterall, if it werent for them, We would still be driving cars that were made to fail after 50k miles by the fatcat carmakers. I’ll look to Ford but Obama can have his company and his union.
We need to get more diesel cars with 65mpg or better enough of the electric cars.
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