Nissan EV Sales Surge in USA — LEAF Up 188%, ARIYA Up 23%

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Nissan was once a world leader in electric vehicles, and a US leader. Its Nissan LEAF was the top selling electric vehicle in the US and worldwide for a while. However, when Carlos Ghosn was shockingly jailed in Japan and pushed out of the corporation, Nissan really stopped pushing on EVs and EV development for a while. Maybe it’s making a comeback, though.

Nissan’s new-ish electric crossover/SUV, the ARIYA, is picking up steam … er, electrons. It had 5,552 deliveries in the 3rd quarter in the US, up 23% from the 3rd quarter of 2023.

Even more notably, the LEAF is surging back. In Q3 2024, 4,514 LEAFs were delivered, which was up a whopping 188% from Q3 2023, when 1,570 LEAFs were delivered.

Overall, Nissan delivered 10,066 electric vehicles last quarter. We don’t have all automakers’ Q3 sales numbers in yet, but if we look at Q2 numbers, this number would have shot Nissan up from 11th (7,128 sales) to 8th.

Naturally, this surge in ARIYA and LEAF sales also means the share of Nissan’s sales that were fully electric increased. In the 2nd quarter, 3.2% of Nissan’s US sales were BEV sales. In the 3rd quarter, 5.1% of Nissan’s US sales were BEV sales. That’s a notable increase in the share of the company’s sales. It’s still not stellar. That 5% is still well below the US average, but note that the US average also includes pure BEV companies, like Tesla, which accounts for 50% of US BEV sales. It would be nice to see Nissan continue its strong BEV sales growth and increase its share of sales that are electric to 10%+ sooner than later. Cadillac is at 19%, BMW is at 15%, Genesis is at 13%, Audi is at 11%, MINI is at 11%, Mercedes is at 10%, and Kia is at 9%. Nissan should be able to do better than 5%.

That said, auto brands focused on providing affordable vehicles (rather than luxury vehicles) have not achieved the same BEV shares as luxury auto brands. Looking at similar such brands, as already noted, Kia led the way in the 2nd quarter (8.7% BEV share), followed by Hyundai (7.8%), Volkswagen (5.7%), Ford (4.7%), Nissan (3.2%), and then Chevrolet (2.5%). Nissan would at least move up in that ranking at 5.1% share, but Kia, Hyundai, and Volkswagen are already providing a higher bar that Nissan should be able to achieve.

To close out this examination of Nissan’s just released 3rd quarter auto sales, let’s return to model-specific sales growth. The LEAF’s 188% sales increase was the greatest of any Nissan model. In fact, even in terms of unit growth, the LEAF’s ~3,000 unit increase in sales was second only to the Pathfinder’s ~5,500 unit increase in sales. The ARIYA’s 23% increase, or about 1,000 unit increase, was among Nissan’s best as well. However, with the model’s potential, and with the ARIYA and LEAF showing how hungry consumers are for these competitive EVs, I hope to see ARIYA’s sales growth up there at the top of the list for Nissan in the 4th quarter, and looking a year out, in the 3rd quarter of 2025. Let’s see if Nissan goes that route.