Ah, someone's been crunching the numbers then?
Indeed so. Nissan is making some pretty remarkable claims for the mileage undertaken by owners of the all-electric Leaf hatchback, compared to the average miles covered per annum by owners of conventional petrol or diesel cars.
Leaf owners staying at home mostly? Covering tiny distances between recharges?
It would seem not. According to Nissan, the average annual mileage for all Leaf drivers across key European markets such as Spain, Norway, Sweden, the UK, Italy and France amounts to 6,721 miles and that figure comes from national statistical sources, so there's no reason to doubt it.
All Leafs (Leaves?) are fitted with Nissan's CarWings telemetry, which reports mileage and any mechanical mishaps back to Nissan and it is this little gizmo that allows Nissan to keep an eye on what sort of distances owners are covering. Nissan has sold 31,000 Leafs across Europe and according to the CarWings data the average annual mileage covered is 10,307 miles, with Nissan's Spanish Leaf customers covering on average 228 miles a week - the highest weekly figure.
German Leaf owners cover the lowest weekly mileage of 173 miles while here in the UK it's in the middle - 201 miles. Nissan further claims that those miles are all being covered at a much lower rate of cost than for conventional petrol or diesel, as the Leaf can be fully charged up to its nominal 100-mile range for just £2, assuming you're charging it at the most beneficial rate.
Jean-Pierre Diernaz, Director of Electric Vehicles for Nissan in Europe, said: "Since the beginning we have said that the Nissan LEAF is much more than just a city car or second car and now we can show the data that proves this. Our customers frequently tell us that they buy the Nissan LEAF as a second car, but end up using it far more than their other vehicle and the information we receive from CarWings reinforces that message."
"The customers tell us this is because the car has very low fuel and servicing costs and that along with the smooth, almost silent ride of the Nissan LEAF make it difficult to go back to a diesel or petrol car."
There's a catch, isn't there?
Yes there is, and it's that Nissan hasn't included the figures for Germany in its table for average annual conventional car mileage, in spite of using German data for its specific Leaf figures. Germans cover on average 14,000km per year (according to figures researched by Shell Fuels). Including the German figures into the average mileage stats increases the European average to 11,272km, or 6,988 miles. So the average Leaf driver is still significantly covering more miles (3,319 miles more), but the gap is narrower than the 50 per cent Nissan claims in its release.
Nissan says that "A German statistic was not used in the European average as the raw data is not available and all average kilometre figures quoted are estimates."
Neil Briscoe - 8 Jan 2015