According to an article written by Alan Ohnsman, Bloomberg News, "Nissan Motors is aggravating the customers it needs most".
It seems that Nissan is following in Zero's footsteps and pissing off their future customers by repeatedly delaying deliveries of the Leaf, dropping and loosing orders and asking some customers to fill out new order requests and then get back at the end of the line, if they couldn't prove that they had arranged installation of the required $2000 home charging units.
One customer said that his delivery date kept jumping around, from April to "pending" in May to June to July. He said that Nissan then just canceled his order that he made in September 2010.
Eric Noble, president of The Car Lab, says that "What it demonstrates is reality - electric vehicles are niche products that can't be mass-produced yet and can't yet be sold like regular vehicles."
The article says that orders were delayed due to technical glitches and communications problems, compounded by Japan's earthquake. In April, Nissan began revamping the pre-sales program by retraining agents and promoting Brendan Jones to manager of U.S. Leaf sales.
The first Leaf buyers were described as more affluent and tech-savvy than typical Nissan customers and require special handling, according to Mr. Jones. He described one California customer who was on the waiting list and was so anxious about his order that "he even got a helicopter to fly over the port to see how many Leafs had arrived." "The expectation we set for our customer service agents didn't prepare them for that level of customer inquiry".
U.S. Leaf deliveries began as a trickle late last year and totaled 2,167 sales through May. GM has sold 2,184 Volts so far this year.
While anyone can reserve a Leaf for a $99 fee, for now Nissan lets people in only Arizona, California, Hawaii, Oregon, Tennessee, Texas and Washington actually place an order for the Leaf.
