That didn’t take long now. In December, the Chevrolet Bolt electric vehicle notched 579 units of sales during its first month of availability, or almost a third of the December sales of the relatively venerable Nissan Leaf electric vehicle. As for January? The Bolt has already leapfrogged the Leaf in terms of domestic demand, at least for the time being.
General Motors’ first mass-produced electric vehicle, the first of which were delivered to a trio of Northern California customers in mid-December, drummed up 1,162 buyers last month. Meanwhile, Nissan’s Leaf sales rose 2.3 percent from a year earlier to 772 vehicles. As for Chevy’s Volt extended-range plug-in vehicle? That model boosted sales by 62 percent from a year earlier to 1,611 units.
As for cumulative sales during the past six years, the Volt continues to lengthen its lead over the Leaf for American plug-in vehicles, as buyers see that the Leaf is in need of some updating. Last year, Nissan executives hinted the next-generation of the Leaf will have a single-charge range of more than 200 miles, though the company’s been mum on when exactly it would see the light of day. The Bolt can go as far as 238 miles on a charge, or more than double the Leaf’s current fully-charged range.
Last year, the Volt boosted sales by 61 percent from 2015 to almost 25,000 units, while Leaf sales fell 19 percent to about 14,000 units. A full roundup of January green car sales should be available on Thursday.
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