Nissan Leaf has best sales month ever with 2,236, Chevy Volt steady at 1,478

It’s been a slow couple months for the Nissan Leaf, with sales hovering around 650 for each of the first two months of the year. Throughout the slowdown (late last year, monthly sales totals were closer to 1,500), Nissan representatives kept saying there was no need to worry, that once production got rolling in Tennessee, sales would climb back up. But they never said we’d be looking at a such a high new record. Just last week, Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn was saying March sales would be around 1,900.

The official numbers were released today, and the Leaf did indeed hit a new record: 2,236 sales. That beats the pants off of the previous record from June 2011, when Nissan sold 1,708 Leafs. While this uptick comes at a time when Nissan North America recorded its best-ever sales month overall, the Leaf-specific increase is due to the introduction of the Tennessee-built model, which is cheaper and better than the 2012 model. In March 2012, Nissan sold 579 Leafs.

On the plug-in hybrid side of the first-two-to-market ledger, the Chevrolet Volt had another solid sales month, but nothing earth shattering. Chevy sold 1,478 Volts last month, down a bit from February (1,626) but up from January (1,140). In March 2012, Chevy sold 2,289 Volts, which was a record at the time.

Now that we’ve got this flash report up, we’ll post our more detailed write-up of last month’s green car sales soon.