All of a sudden, Nissan doesn't have enough Leafs to go around

March: 2,236. April: 1,937. May: 2,138. June: 2,225.

Those are the US sales totals for the Nissan Leaf over the last four months. According to Erik Gottfried, Nissan's director of electric vehicle sales and marketing, the numbers are a bit too high. Or production is too low. Or something. Point is, demand is apparently outstripping supply.

Nissan says it's "going to be short on inventory all through the summer."

Despite having a stated annual capacity of 150,000 Leaf EVs at its Smyrna, TN plant – over 10,000 a month – Leaf production in the Volunteer State has not yet ramped up to a level that can satisfy demand for 2,200 Leafs a month. According to Automotive News, Gottfried recently told dealers in Texas that, "we're doing everything we can to get them more inventory. But it's taking some time. ... We're going to be short on inventory all through the summer. It will be late fall before we can produce enough to satisfy everybody."

Everybody in this case means the expanding markets outside the West Coast, where all the cool EVs have long been allowed to play. AN says that the third-largest market for the Leaf is now Atlanta, where there is only a nine-day supply of the EV. The world's most popular highway-speed EV (over 60,000 have been sold worldwide, and around 30,000 in the US) got a big price drop earlier this year when the company started making the car in the US. Previously, all Leafs were exported from Japan.