Buyers turn to Tesla Model 3 after Nissan shuts down massive LEAF group buy effort with 3,700 people

Earlier this month, we reported on an impressive group buy effort in Montreal that was likely going to result in Nissan’s biggest LEAF sale ever with over 2,500 people signed up. At the time, the LEAF owner behind the effort, Bruno Marcoux, told us that he was in negotiation with executives at Nissan Canada and he was hopeful they could bring the price down to $20,000 CAD.

Since our report, the number of people who signed up for the group buy increased to 3,700, but in an unbelievable turn of event, Nissan Canada’s president shuts down the effort, making the potential customers furious.

The effort was not a new idea, the scale was unprecedented, but Marcoux got the idea from the successful group buy of 248 LEAFs by the South West Energy Efficiency Project (SWEEP) earlier this year in Colorado.

The organization managed to get a significant discount of $8,349 on the LEAF. Both Nissan America and the local dealership contributed to the discount, and combined with both state and federal tax credits, the price came down to a more than reasonable $12,130 USD.

When presenting before the Quebec government’s commission to discuss the implementation of a zero-emission mandate in the province yesterday, Nissan Canada’s President, Joni Paiva, said that they wouldn’t support the effort despite the precedent created by Nissan USA in Colorado.

Paiva said that Nissan Canada believes the LEAF’s price is already discounted enough with Quebec’s $8,000 CAD electric vehicle incentive, which is of course provided by public funds and a similar discount is available in Colorado, and they are not interested in discounting the vehicle further for the 3,700 people who signed up.

A video of his comments on the subject before the commission (French):

Roulez Electrique, a Quebec-based electric vehicle blog keeping us updated on the effort, shared the news yesterday and unsurprisingly, the potential buyers quickly expressed their disappointment on the forum. They don’t understand why they can’t get a deal similar to the group buy in Colorado.

Several people who signed up for the group buy are letting Nissan know that they will instead wait for the Tesla Model 3.

“Bye bye Nissan. Hi Tesla Model 3.” – a potential buyer commented.

Of course, they shouldn’t expect a group buy to be available for the vehicle since it wouldn’t make sense for Tesla to discount a vehicle with a backlog of 400,000 reservations.

The turn of event is particularly interesting when you consider that Nissan actually launched a new ad campaign earlier this year to attract Model 3 reservation holders.

If the group buy would have been successful, Nissan would have more than doubled its entire LEAF sales in Canada since the introduction of the vehicle in the market.