What does 500,000 actually mean?

In just about one month the first affordable electric car for the masses will hit the markets all over the world. The much talked about Nissan Leaf is finally getting out to customers and last week Carlos Ghosn, Chief Executive Officer of the Renault-Nissan alliance behind Leaf, said that electric car would hit 500,000 sold units a year in three years.

I’ve always thought of the Leaf as a great alternative to a gas consuming car and I think I kind of expected every environmental responsible individual to sell his or her old fashioned car for the benefit of a green, electric car. That is, of course, a naïve thought, but a nice one at least.

So I thought about the 500,000 cars that Carlos Ghosn expects to sell every year for the next three years. Is it a lot of cars? Is it what you could expect or is the number disappointing?

Ghosn has earlier sad that he expected to sell a million cars a year, so compared to his previous forecast the 500,000 seems like a low number. Furthermore, I tried to compare the number to the total car sales in the U.S and the total global sales. The year to date car sales in the U.S. in 2010 is 9,570,721 and globally automakers are on track to sell about 74 million cars before this year is over. In comparison to those numbers 500,000 cars a year seems like drops in the ocean.

Maybe the electric cars will beat the estimates and more Leafs will be rolling on the street within the next couple of years. The development in the electric car industry is sure an interesting thing to watch.