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Nissan Leaf sales slowly start to pick up in the US with the new generation

The new Nissan Leaf has revitalized sales of the Japanese automaker’s flagship electric car in several markets, including its own home market and in Europe, but it has yet to have a significant effect on U.S. sales.

Now Leaf sales in the U.S. are just starting to slowly pick up.

Nissan has already delivered tens of thousands of new Leafs in Japan and Europe since the launch last year, but barely a few thousand units have made their way to the US.

During the Leaf’s heyday in the US, which was in 2014, Nissan was delivering as many as 3,000 Leafs per month in the country.

Sales have seen reduced to just over 1,000 units per month and that crashed to just a few hundred units per month since the new Leaf has been unveiled.

The Japanese automaker has since started producing the new generation Leaf in the US and sales are slowly going back to normal levels.

After 895 units in February and another 1,500 in March, Nissan announced today that 1,171 Leafs were delivered in the US last month.

It’s nothing too impressive, but it’s still a 10% increase over the same period last year.

As we stated in our review of the vehicle, while some EV buyers were disappointed by the new Leaf for not featuring enough upgrades, especially a lack of longer range battery pack with active thermal management, Nissan did introduce several new upgrades without increasing the price of the vehicle.

It positions the vehicle as significantly cheaper than the Tesla Model 3 and the Chevy Bolt EV.

A leak earlier this year showed that Nissan is planning to add a new powertrain to the next-gen Leaf in the 2019 version, which should make the Leaf more competitive with those vehicles, but it is also expected to increase the price.

The new version of the vehicle would feature a 60 kWh battery pack as expected, but also a new 160 kW electric motor and 11 to 22 kW onboard charger.

The new battery pack would also be widely different from Nissan’s previous battery pack technology. It is expected to be equipped with cells from LG instead of AESC, Nissan’s own battery company which they sold this summer, and a new thermal management system.

Those changes are also expected to enable a higher DC fast-charging rate of “~100 kW.”

We expect to hear more about the new version in the coming months.

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Avatar for Fred Lambert Fred Lambert

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