Nissan Renault have sold 100,000 electric cars

Nissan boss, Carlos Ghosn, has revealed that Nissan and Renault have now sold 100,000 electric cars worldwide since the Nissan LEAF arrived in 2011.

Nissan Renault are the only mainstream car maker to have embraced the idea that the electric car is the future, so they’ve been busy building and marketing their EV offerings for a couple of years and have now reached a sales milestone – 100,000 EVs sold.

It sounds a lot, but in terms of worldwide car sales it’s a drop in the ocean. Still, it’s an important milestone nonetheless.

The bulk of EV sales Nissan-Renault have made have been the Nissan LEAF, which really is a very good car as long as you don’t mind paying through the nose in the first place and then being curtailed by its range.

But perhaps the most promising EV to come from Nissan-Renault so far is the smaller Renault Zoe, which is exactly what we believe an EV should be – a small city commuter car.

If you take price out of the equation, the Zoe is a no-brainer for anyone living and commuting in a city area. It’s compact, will do up to 90 miles on a charge – more than enough for almost anyone’s daily commute – and contributes little to a city’s pollution.

But it all falls apart on price when you realise the Zoe costs £18k before the taxpayer kicks in a bribe and another £70-90 a month to lease its batteries (plus whatever it costs you to charge). It just doesn’t add up.

The 100,000 buyers of Renault-Nissan’s EVs are proper ‘early adopters’, and they’re willing to pay through the nose for a perceived benefit.

But the only way Renault-Nissan can make real inroads in to the car market with EVs is if they’re comparable on price to ICE cars, which they’re not.

But well done, Nissan-Renault, on a milestone in EV sales.