Chevy Volt has best month ever, but Nissan Leaf still wins 2011 plug-in sales contest

And the numbers are in. For December, the Chevrolet Volt sold 1,529. units, putting the plug-in car’s 2011 total at 7,671. While that overall number fell well short of the announced target of 10,000-12,000, December 2011 was the Volt’s best sales month ever and the positive trend positions the car in a good place going into 2012.

The other mainstream plug-in vehicle that was available all year, the Nissan Leaf, also ended the year with an up month, selling 954 units and a grand total of 9,674 for the year. This is just 326 sales under the company’s 10,000-unit target for 2011.

We’ll have a more complete listing of how the green car market fared up soon. For now, how do these numbers strike you? Is it a failure to have not hit the goals set out at the beginning of the year? Or do you see the upward swing in the sales of both numbers as a positive enough result that you can see 2012 becoming the true Year of the Plug-In Car?