Sure to piss off existing Leaf drivers, free only for new Leaf sales since April 1st. Certainly not how Tesla does it, but they have taken a que from Tesla, sort of...
Nissan has proven many times that they could care less about current owners of the Leaf.. look at their handling of the severe battery degradation and the drop in the price of the car
Free charging that takes forever, from charging stations that may or may not work....for new customers only... Some of these companies have absolutely no clue.
If charging infrastructure were plentiful and reliable, I'd think this was a great idea. But in most areas there are already too many plug-ins competing for too few plugs, especially considering how unreliable most stations are - even ignoring problems like ICEing. While this is a great incentive for new owners who will plug in at any chance they get whether they need it or not, this is bad for all other plug-in owners, especially EVs who rely on existing infrastructure to be available when they need it. Whatever money Nissan is spending on this would be better spent on installing additional charging infrastructure. If you want to target new LEAF owners specifically with incentives, give them a $100 EZ-Charge card (more than enough public charging for most people to last a couple years, but not so much that they might abuse it frequently) and install more QC and L2 stations at or near existing locations.
Hmm, looks like the main PR piece and most news articles left out a bit of crucial information - the free charging is limited - which also limits the bulk of my initial complaints. Found on AutoblogGreen: Nissan will expand free* charging incentive to 25 Leaf markets Free charging is limited to 30min on a QC station and 1 hour on L2. That should limit the amount of plug-hogging that can be done. Hopefully those limits are daily limits.
I'm guessing, but I think the UMC 14-50 adapter recall and redesign slowed the CHAdeMO adapter rollout a bit... Probably impacted both their charging engineering team and supplier production...
Um no. As an early adopter, we got free charging from Blink and Aeroviroment for the past 2-3 years already. I think this is a fantastic idea. It doesn't cost Nissan hardly anything and it sells new Leafs.
The Nissan Press Release is here Nissan launches programs to make LEAF charging free and “EZ†- Nissan Online Newsroom Overall I think it is a very good plan that will increase sales. The only criticism I have is that it will only be for the top 25 Nissan markets in USA. They should do this for all 50 states instead.