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New car sales price Nissan Leaf

Leaf now 30 per cent lighter on your pocket.

In a solid sign that Australia is turning its back on emission-free electric cars, Nissan has slashed $17,000 off the price of its Leaf hatch.

It chops the hi-tech, all-electric car's price to $29,818 plus GST for government and no-for-profit organisations, and $31,818 for fleet buyers.

Private buyers will pay $39,990 drive away or $85 a week making it the cheapest volume electric car on the market following the withdrawal from the market in January of the Mitsubishi i-MiEV.

It is the second price reduction for Nissan's Leaf since December when the price dropped $10,000 to $46,990.

Carsguide finds the price reduction of the car - up to yesterday a $46,990 drive away vehicle - is caused by Nissan trying to push the electric car message but also by the disinterest of motorists in electric vehicles.

Nissan has sold only 36 Leafs this year and Australian sales of all-electric vehicles to private buyers totals only 16 to the end of March. This compares with about 3300 sales of the Nissan Pulsar and 124 for the Toyota Prius hybrid.

Australia now has three all-electric cars available - the Nissan Leaf, Mitsubishi i-MiEV, and Holden Volt, though the latter technically has a supporting petrol engine.

The Volt, which costs $60,000, has sold 24 units this year, and the customer order-only $48,800 i-MiEV just three examples.

Neil Dowling
Contributing Journalist
GoAutoMedia Cars have been the corner stone to Neil’s passion, beginning at pre-school age, through school but then pushed sideways while he studied accounting. It was rekindled when he started contributing to magazines including Bushdriver and then when he started a motoring section in Perth’s The Western Mail. He was then appointed as a finance writer for the evening Daily News, supplemented by writing its motoring column. He moved to The Sunday Times as finance editor and after a nine-year term, finally drove back into motoring when in 1998 he was asked to rebrand and restyle the newspaper’s motoring section, expanding it over 12 years from a two-page section to a 36-page lift-out. In 2010 he was selected to join News Ltd’s national motoring group Carsguide and covered national and international events, launches, news conferences and Car of the Year awards until November 2014 when he moved into freelancing, working for GoAuto, The West Australian, Western 4WDriver magazine, Bauer Media and as an online content writer for one of Australia’s biggest car groups. He has involved himself in all aspects including motorsport where he has competed in everything from motocross to motorkhanas and rallies including Targa West and the ARC Forest Rally. He loves all facets of the car industry, from design, manufacture, testing, marketing and even business structures and believes cars are one of the few high-volume consumables to combine a very high degree of engineering enlivened with an even higher degree of emotion from its consumers.
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