The marketing strategy for the Leaf EV concerns a selling price tag within the range of $25,000 to $33,000. This will most likely not include any government incentives offered to buyers.
“Competitive pricing is going to allow mass-market appeal, which is going to set Nissan apart”, said Larry Dominique vice president of product planning for Nissan North America Inc.
Nissan aims to focus the advertising strategy on Leaf's “zero emissions, no price premium and lower maintenance costs” compared to a conventional gasoline-powered vehicle. The idea Larry Dominique is trying to emphasize for the Leaf is “lower total cost of ownership”. He then went on saying the Leaf would be “less expensive to operate than internal combustion engines even if gasoline prices drop to $1.10 a gallon”, Automotive News reported.
The rush with which Nissan plans to enter the US market is fueled by the $99.8 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to a Phoenix technology supplier by the name of Electric Transportation Engineering Corp. This company will be responsible for installing some 12,500 recharging stations in Nissan's top five markets: the Phoenix-Tucson corridor of Arizona; Oregon; San Diego; Seattle and Tennessee, the same source wrote.
The first 5,000 units to enter the states will be delivered to selected customers that will be asked to drive and recharge the Leaf in a certain way so that the Japanese car maker can obtain several data about the car. This will be conducted through an onboard “black box”, which the customer must accept for the first two years.
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