Nissan Leaf 2018 Selling Like Hot Cakes
Nissan delays of the Leaf causing loss of government incentives
It’s not just here in Spain where the production delays are leading to customers having orders put back by up to a month. In France there is a customer who was supposed to get his car in February and the date was changed to March. That would have been okay except it was then changed again to a date in April. The French government are giving a cash incentive to people getting rid of diesel cars of €4000. The last date for this incentive is the end of March. Unless Nissan can get the car to the customer before the end of March he will lose the cash incentive.
Give with one hand take with the other
I have heard from two different sources when you do your tax declaration it is likely the Spanish government will take away as much as half of your incentive money. I saw this proved already when buying my previous car. There was a €1000 incentive for taking an old car off the road. That €1000 was clawed back by the government in the tax declaration. I suppose it will depend to a certain extent on how much money you earn during the year. I expect it’s the case that if you are earning less money, then less of the incentive money will be taken back. Even so, I’m not impressed. An incentive amount to buy a car means nothing if they’re going to take a large proportion of it back. You don’t know how much you’re going to lose and so makes it difficult to plan finances.
It’s all about the timing
My own specific problem with the incentive is this. I first ordered my car on 13th of December and I was going to buy the launch model. I went into the dealership on 10th of January and decided I was going to change to the Tekna version. I had a couple of reasons for doing this. The first reason was for the colour as I was not really impressed with the Spring Cloud. Sometimes I look at it and I think it’s okay and other times I don’t like it at all. When spending a significant amount of money on a car why go with something less than optimum? The same goes for the extras you get with the Tekna. The other extras were the better sound system, heated front and rear seats, heated steering wheel and LED headlights. For the life of me I can’t understand why LED headlights are not standard as using halogen is expensive in terms of energy usage. There is also the leather seats which are better to look after and keep clean. I do wonder if they might become a little sticky or hot to sit on during the hot weather.
With regards the timing of the order and the date for the delivery will it go with the original date or the date in January. I’m expecting to get my turn for delivery based on making the order in December. Nissan in their bureaucracy might have other ideas. The salesman at the dealership says he is fighting for the timing to go with the December order. This is important because the car needs to arrive within 120 days of the date the government incentive was confirmed. I don’t think it’s possible to reset that date to the same date Nissan might be going with. There is the possibility my car is delivered and I will have run out of time for the incentive money. Even if the government are taking back half of the incentive promised it’s still going to make the car more expensive than was expected. I’ll be telling the Nissan garage to cancel the order and I don’t know if I’m going to have to start again. I don’t know if there are any incentives scheduled for this year. I don’t know if those incentives if they are coming are available now at the beginning of the year. It’s all a huge mess.
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