Nissan Leaf Backlog Not Likely to Ease Anytime Soon

For a car that almost no one has seen, the Nissan Leaf certainly is popular. Nissan stopped taking U.S. orders last September when it reached its target of 20,000 reservations four months ahead of schedule.

Now the question is how soon Nissan will be able to fill those orders and another 7,000 or so in Japan and Europe.

The company says it expects to build about 10,000 of the all-electric cars by March 31, leaving it with a backlog of at least 17,000. Still undecided is when Nissan will start taking orders again, and how it will allocate cars as they roll off the assembly line at the Oppama plant south of Tokyo.

Balancing demand from customers in Japan, Europe and the United States gets a little tricky, as it's more efficient to ship larger batches of the cars than to send them in smaller groups.

Automotive News reports that Nissan expects to fill 6,000 orders in Japan by the end of March, with American and European shipments to follow.

Leaf assembly lines will be added in Britain in 2012 and Tennessee in 2013. Nissan officials say they can't move the schedule up because suppliers are just beginning to build factories to produce the lithium ion battery packs that will power the little cars.