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I saw a headline this morning that Nissan has just dropped plans to produce powertrains for the new Nissan LEAF in the UK. The reason is reportedly that consumer demand in Europe is not as high as hoped for the model.
This struck me, particularly because the new Nissan LEAF looks so competitive! It’s won a ton of awards, because it offers one of the best value-for-money packages on the market. The model meets basically all core requirements a family would want from their car, and then it comes in at a high attractive price.
So, I was immediately wondering what is going wrong. Why are more people not buying the new LEAF?
There’s one thought that has been on my mind for a while. The original Nissan LEAF led the world in EV sales for quite a while. It was the pacesetter for the industry. However, because Nissan decided to not include thermal management of its battery initially, the model had huge battery degradation and a lot of controversy around that. Many people did love their Nissan LEAFs, but the batteries really did not hold up well enough.
