Analytics Digest / No. 003
Vincero Analytics Digest
Fuel prices are clearing Leaf stock fast, and arrivals are not keeping up. The Nissan Leaf has had its strongest fortnight of the year: 77 left dealer yards in the two weeks to 3 Oct, against 35 in the fortnight before the move began. Fresh arrivals fell from 31 a week to 15. The pool is 48 cars below its peak, and the asking price has not moved yet. The update below has the week so far.
Our data shows the movement, not the cause. Fuel prices are the reason we looked, and the timing fits, but the corpus cannot prove it. This issue follows one model week by week, with the controls that say the movement is real, and then asks when the price stops it.
The data now runs to 3 October 2026, six days into the week of 28 Sep. In those days 43 Leafs sold, 40 of them on dealers watched since 1 July, and 28 fresh listings arrived, a pace of about 33 a week against 35 in the week of 24 Aug, the busiest in the series. The pool is 488, 48 below its peak, and the median asking price is $19,955. If arrivals hold at this rate when the week closes, the pipeline has not thinned after all, and the next issue will say so.
Since publication the series has settled: the week of 14 Sep now reads 38 sold, not the 39 published; the week of 21 Sep now reads 26 sold, not the 33 published. Those cars came back onto dealer sites after being counted as gone, so they were never sold. Every figure on this page is the settled one.
| Week first listed / sold | Sold | Fresh arrivals | Relists | Live at week end | Days of supply | Median ask | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| w/c 27 Jul | 17 | 20 | 4 | 475 | 196 | $20,498 | |
| w/c 3 Aug | 19 | 26 | 6 | 485 | 179 | $20,845 | |
| w/c 10 Aug | 21 | 25 | 1 | 478 | 159 | $20,430 | |
| w/c 17 Aug | 18 | 26 | 10 | 489 | 190 | $20,430 | |
| w/c 24 Aug | 16 | 35 | 9 | 505 | 221 | $19,990 | |
| w/c 31 Aug | 13 | 31 | 11 | 524 | 282 | $19,990 | |
| w/c 7 Sep | 24 | 22 | 9 | 526 | 153 | $19,950 | |
| w/c 14 Sep | 38 | 20 | 10 | 512 | 94 | $19,930 | |
| w/c 21 Sep | 26 | 15 | 1 | 497 | 134 | $19,900 | |
| w/c 28 Sep† | 43 | 28 | 12 | 488 | 68 | $19,955 |
† A six-day week: the data runs to 3 Oct. Method says why it stops there.
Read the sold column against the arrivals column. Through August, arrivals ran ahead of sales every week and the pool grew. In the week of 7 Sep they crossed. The week after, sales reached 38 against 20 arrivals. In the latest full week sales were 26 and arrivals 15, off the peak on both sides and still well past the August line. Relists, which ran up to 11 a week through August, fell to 1, so the cars leaving are not coming back as new listings.
A pool that grows and then shrinks can be a dataset that grew and then stopped growing. So the same series runs on the stable panel: only dealers we had observed on or before 1 July. On the panel the pool went from 305 on 1 Jun to a peak of 477 and back to 454 on 3 Oct. The winter build-up sits entirely on the panel, so it was real. The September fall is steeper on the panel than on the whole market. Coverage did not do this. The sales are on the panel too: 35 of the peak week’s 38 were on dealers watched since 1 July, up from 11 in the last week of August.
Cars first listed on a dealer yard within Vincero's coverage. We observe a large share of New Zealand's registered dealers daily and estimate that at around 90% of national dealer retail listings — an estimate, and one that rises as coverage grows. This is not a complete census of the market.
A shrinking pool, and a price that hasn’t noticed
| Date | Live, all dealers | Live, stable panel |
|---|---|---|
| 1 Jun | 305 | 305 |
| 1 Jul | 384 | 384 |
| 1 Aug | 444 | 444 |
| 1 Sep | 511 | 477 |
| 3 Oct | 487 | 454 |
Days of supply is the live pool divided by a week’s sales, times seven: how long the stock lasts at the current rate. Through August it ran between 159 and 282 days. In the week of 14 Sep it was 94, the lowest since we began tracking in May, and 134 the week after. And the national median asking price sits at $19,955, flat since mid-August and $3,743 below where it started winter. Stock has fallen and the price has not followed yet.
It is the late-model car
| Generation | Live now | Sold, last 14 days | Median ask | Days of supply |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 and newer | 346 | 40 | $20,990 | 121 |
| 2017 – 2018 | 116 | 27 | $14,985 | 60 |
| Pre-2017 | 26 | 10 | $7,990 | 36 |
40 of the fortnight’s sales were 2019 and newer Leafs, the 40 kWh and 62 kWh generation, at a median asking of $20,990. The cheap 24 kWh tail is not driving this. And it is not one dealer clearing out: 43 dealers moved a Leaf in the fortnight, and 85 hold one today.
Stock does not run out. Price stops it.
| If, each week… | Sold | Arrive | Net | Back to July’s pool | Back to June’s | Zero |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| This week's pace | 50 | 33 | −17 | 21 Nov | 19 Dec | 24 Apr |
| Peak-week pace | 38 | 20 | −18 | 14 Nov | 19 Dec | 17 Apr |
| Arrivals at the August high (what if) | 50 | 35 | −15 | 21 Nov | 2 Jan | 22 May |
| Demand kick (what if) | 60 | 33 | −27 | 31 Oct | 21 Nov | 13 Feb |
Straight lines, from 488 live. The first two rows are measured, this week scaled to seven days and the peak week as it was; the rest are what-ifs built on this week’s pace. At this week’s pace the national pool is back to June’s level by 19 Dec and would be gone by 24 Apr. Nothing changing is the one thing that will not happen.
A Leaf bought at Japanese auction takes six to ten weeks to reach a New Zealand yard, so the cars landing now were bought in August, when stock was over 500 and the price had fallen for three straight months. Importers eased off then, and the arrivals column showed it: 25 to 35 a week through August, 15 in the week of 21 Sep. Then 28 in the first six days of the week after, an August rate again, with 43 sold against them. Demand can react to a pump price overnight; supply takes the auction lead time.
The mechanism that stops the drain is price. Under about sixty days of supply, a dealer holding a 2019 to 2022 Leaf has no reason to hold a discount. Higher asks slow the sell rate and pull cars in from private sellers and Trade Me, and importers respond from late November. The floor is the unwanted tail: high-kilometre 24 kWh cars, low battery health, overpriced late models. For dealers holding late-model Leafs, the market is saying not to discount. For dealers looking to buy, the wholesale window is the gap between the arrivals column and the sold column, and this week sales were still ahead.
July, on its own
The Leaf is the story this month, so the whole-market boards are short. July’s cohort ran at 38.2% in the first half and 37.4% in the second, a drift of −0.6 points on the fixed panel of 391 yards. The yard spread is unchanged: the bottom decile of yards cleared 13.3% of fresh stock in 30 days and the top decile 57.6%, across 145 qualifying yards.
Electrified stock as a whole is still the slowest segment
| Segment | Cars | Sold 30d | Median ask | Cut | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Korean | 501 | 45.1% | $24,490 | 24.1% | |
| American | 679 | 44.9% | $21,990 | 21.1% | |
| Euro Continental | 570 | 41.2% | $22,995 | 30.7% | |
| Mainstream JDM | 3,949 | 41.0% | $17,990 | 20.6% | |
| Ute 4WD | 864 | 39.6% | $35,990 | 19.7% | |
| Luxury Prestige | 1,362 | 39.6% | $29,980 | 27.8% | |
| Commercial Van | 310 | 36.8% | $31,990 | 22.9% | |
| Performance | 150 | 31.3% | $21,980 | 22.9% | |
| People Mover | 444 | 29.7% | $15,995 | 24.9% | |
| EV Hybrid | 1,596 | 22.5% | $24,980 | 18.6% |
Set beside the Leaf: across July’s cohort, EV and hybrid stock as a segment sold at 22.5% inside a month, slowest on the yard against 29.7% for people movers, and the least discounted at 18.6% when nothing else is under 19.7%. The Leaf squeeze is one model inside that segment turning the other way in September, and the July cohort predates it. Whether the segment follows is next issue’s question.
A third of the stock on New Zealand yards has been there three months
The Leaf is the exception on a market that is mostly sitting. Of the cars that have been on a yard three months, 40.3% have ever had a price cut; the rest are at the price they arrived with, and when a yard does cut, the median move is $2,000. 76 yards holding 4,170 cars had not removed a listing in 60 days and are set aside from this board; and for 7,874 of the aged cars, 90 days is a floor, because they were already listed when observation began on 29 May.
Method
Where the data stops, and why
Every figure in this issue runs to 3 Oct. On 4 Oct our scan marked 2,245 of the 2,279 cars that left dealer sites as sold on a 24-hour absence. That is a gap in our coverage of dealer sites, not sales, and those cars either confirm as sold or reappear over the following nights. Rather than publish days we could not defend, the issue stops at 3 Oct. The spotlight’s last week is a six-day week, marked as such, and closes when the scans settle.
The spotlight
One make and model, identified by normalised make and model text. Sold is a listing that disappears from a dealer site and stays gone for 48 hours, or carries a SOLD badge; a listing gone only 24 hours is presumed, and each week’s presumed count is carried in the data. Fresh arrivals exclude relists and cars already listed when observation began. Live stock and the median asking price come from the nightly series. Days of supply is live divided by the week’s sold, times seven, with a partial week’s sold scaled to seven days first. Wholesale auction stock is excluded; Turners is included.
The control
The stable panel is every dealer we had observed on or before 1 July. A pool that rises on the panel rose because dealers stocked up, not because we started watching more of them. The Leaf pool’s winter rise sits entirely on the panel, and its September fall is steeper on the panel than overall.
What the numbers are not
Sold is inferred, not reported. Prices are dealer asking prices, not transaction prices. “Lowest since we began tracking” means since May 2026; New Zealand had tighter Leaf supply in 2021 and 2022. Asking prices have not risen: this issue does not say they have. Fresh arrivals ran at 25 to 35 a week through August and 15 in the latest full week, then 28 in the first six days of the week after. Two more full weeks under twenty would confirm the pipeline has thinned. This issue does not claim it, and the week so far points the other way.
The projections
Straight lines from 488 live at the stated sold and arrival rates. They are what would happen if nothing changed, printed to show why something will. The drain slows as the unwanted tail becomes what is left.
The premise
Fuel prices are the reason we looked, not a finding of this issue. The corpus shows that Leafs sold faster and arrived slower in September; it cannot say why, and this issue does not claim to.
The cohort
Board 04 is every retail listing first seen 1–31 July 2026, excluding left-censored records and relists, each observed for a full 30 days. The stable panel for its within-month read is the 391 yards first observed on or before 5 July holding at least five live cars at both 31 July and 31 August.
Coverage
We observe a large share of New Zealand's registered dealers every day and estimate that at around 90% of national dealer retail listings, rising as more yards come into coverage. Every figure here describes the cars we observe. Rates and distributions carry across the gap; absolute counts are a floor, not a national total.
What we excluded
Manheim, a wholesale auction house whose median listing is damaged and salvage stock, along with salvage yards and dismantlers. A small number of records whose build year or model was clearly a parsing failure are dropped everywhere. Yards with ten or more live cars and no removal in 60 days are set aside from the market-today board, with the count printed on it.
What we suppressed
segment: cheap_jdm_import (n=104 < 150); region: tasman_marlborough_nelson (n=99 < 120); region: hawkes_bay (n=76 < 120); region: northland (n=67 < 120); region: southland (n=56 < 120); region: west_coast (n=23 < 120); region: taranaki (n=17 < 120); region: bay_of_plenty (one dealer is 86.3% of the cohort, > 50%); origin×band: Under $10k (Chinese n=33 < 50); origin×band×EV: $10k – $20k (Chinese n=2 < 50); origin×band×EV: $20k – $30k (Chinese n=11 < 50); origin×band×non-EV: $30k – $50k (Chinese n=42 < 50); origin×band×non-EV: $50k + (Chinese n=31 < 50). We would rather show a gap than a number we can’t stand behind.
The cadence
Sell-through always reports the prior month. A month’s 30-day cohort cannot be complete until 30 days after that month ends, so the digest carries a deliberate lag. The spotlight and the market-today board are the exceptions, and say their date.
Next issue. No. 004 lands in early November with August’s cohort fully observed, and the Leaf followed through October: did the price move, and did the arrivals recover?
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