A word on Nissan Leaf sales, orders and reservation numbers

What's up with the sales, orders and reservations of the Nissan Leaf? Nissan loudly trumpeted the 20,000 reservations it originally collected back in September, 2010 and Nissan's Mark Perry recently told AutoblogGreen that, since then, that number has climbed to around 26,000. Where do things stand today? That's not exactly simple to figure out. Here's what we know:

• Number of accepted Leaf reservations: 26,000
• – Number of Leaf models sold: 10,000
• – Number sold in January: 800 (estimate)
• – Number sold in February: 800 (estimate. Perry recently said these two months were sold out or nearly sold out)
• – Number of people who haven't had a chance to order because they live in a state where the Leaf is not yet for sale: 2,000 (according, again, to Perry)
• – Number of people who cancelled (unknown)
• = 12,400 people or so

Nissan's Katherine Zachary tells Autoblog that the company doesn't share cancellation data, so it's not possible for outsiders to know exactly how many of the 12,400 have raised and then lowered their hands. Zachary added, "We have new people coming into the process every day, so it's really a moving target." Still, somewhere out there, there could be 12,000 people who are patiently waiting to snatch up Nissan's 2012 Leaf production. Even if 50 percent of them cancelled, that still leaves many months of strong sales coming for Nissan in the U.S. this coming year, even as production ramps up.

One thing that Zachary was willing to share were the colors chosen by buyers for model year 2012 Leaf orders. They are:

• Brilliant Silver – 24%
• Blue Ocean – 23%
• Glacier Pearl – 21%
• Cayenne Red – 19%
• Super Black – 14%

Source: Autoblog Green