Electric cars pass 1 billion kilometers

Earlier this year (December 2014), Nissan announced that its top flagship electric car model Nissan Leaf has become the first electric car model to top 1 billion total kilometers (about 650 million miles) driven by all of its owners.   Since they had hoped to reach that mark by the end of 2015, it looks like they are one year ahead of schedule. This is enough distance to circle the globe almost 25,000 times.  All of these miles have been accumulated in just under 4 years of sales for the Leaf.

Nissan has had a very successful collaboration with Renault in the electric car market, selling over 200,000 electric vehicles worldwide.  And while these vehicles have combined to log close to 4 billion total km, the total sales of these vehicles still lag behind what industry analysts had hoped they would be – over 250,000 sales by this time.

These electric cars are a lot more popular internationally than they are in the all-important American car market, where Nissan Leaf sales are only expected to hit about 30,000 for the 2014 calendar year.

Tesla Steps Into The Ring

Competing electric car maker Tesla also claims that its fleet of Model S high-end electric cars has passed the combined 1 billion km mark.  Since we have no overt reason to doubt Tesla’s claim, we can infer from this that Tesla drivers put more miles on their vehicles – 50,000 Tesla Model S cars logging about 20,000 km each compared to about 80,000 Nissan Leaf’s (is it Leaf’s or “Leaves”) logging only 12,000 km each. 

Such a wide variance of distance could well mean that Tesla consumers like their cars more than Nissan Leaf owners.  This would not surprise us in the least, since the Model S was Consumer Reports’ highest rated car for 2014 and can step into the ring and go punch-for-punch with any other sedan out there for performance and quality.  Not sure that the Leaf can say the same.

At any rate, whether one is a Leaf aficionado or a “Model S man”, these car models are saving hundreds of millions of gallons of fossil fuel. And that’s a good thing, no matter which one you prefer.

Check out some of our other recent posts on Electric Cars:

• Drivers ask questions about hybrid cars - we give the answers
• Another hybrid misses the mark on gas mileage
• Forget Hybrid, Think Diesel
• Electric Cars: Great Idea, But Why So Expensive?

^{Image Credit: Wikipedia}