Nissan LEAF: Fleet sales double

Nissan has revealed that fleet sales of its electric LEAF have doubled in the UK, with overall Nissan fleet sales up 9 per cent.

Sales of electric cars are not exactly stellar, but there is a light at the end of a very long tunnel shining dimly on UK EV sales – the fleet sector.

Nissan has reported that its fleet sales in the UK – with 89 per cent of all fleets sales of cars actually built in the UK – has risen by 9 per cent so far in 2012, but the Nissan LEAF EV has seen its fleets sales more than double.

However, although the numbers don’t lie, there does need to be some perspective.

Up until the end of October 2012, Nissan sold 43,918 cars to fleets in the UK with the Nissan Qashqai taking the biggest slice of the cake with sales of 19,309, 8,965 for the Juke, 6,005 for the Note and 4,965 for the Qashqai+2 – and 468 for the LEAF.

So the Nissan LEAF, although it doubled its fleet sales, accounted for just 1 per cent of Nissan’s fleet sales, and there are very particular reasons why fleet sales of the LEAF have grown. You all paid for that growth.

Factor in the £5,000 bribe the UK government offers for buyers of an electric car, add in the fact that the BIK rates are zero for an EV (a regular Ford Focus Zetec 2.0 TDCi for a company car driver on £30k a year would yield £720 for the revenue) and the 100 per cent first year writing down allowance for EVs (which costs the revenue £6240, £5280 more than the aforementioned Focus writing down allowance) and each of those LEAF sales cost you – the taxpayer – £11,000.

That’s a total cost to the UK taxpayer of £5,148,000 for Nissan LEAF fleet sales so far in 2012.

Sounds alike a bargain.

By Cars UK