The Japanese automaker has reportedly already received 7,000 pre-orders in the U.S.

This is assuming that everyone who made a refundable $99 deposit will carry through and want to buy the car. And 25% of those people are outside the initial roll-out markets. Thus of those orders, only about 5,000 are in roll-out markets, and if 20% drop out, that only leaves about 4,000 serious buyers. They may get more reservations, but with all the publicity, most of the serious buyers have probably already reserved.

 

publicity? you mean like on every Nissan TV ad, at the end they say:

"and now for something completly different, the %100 electric Nissan Leaf"

who notices those commercials?



now they just need to deliver to the early adopters and let word of mouth do it's magic.

 

Seem reasonable, the first three days got 6635 pre-orders, then the next five days got 7000-6635 = 365 orders.