Nissan has just announced that U.S. production of its new 2018 LEAF commenced today.

This marks a major milestone for the new LEAF.

With sales of the old LEAF falling off a cliff in recent months in the U.S., the refreshed, longer range 2018 LEAF (details) can't get here soon enough. While at the same time, new LEAF sales and demand in other markets have hit amazing heights in just a short amount of time. Here's hoping the same happens in the States.

U.S. sales of the 2018 LEAF are tapped to begin next month.

Editor's Note: If this news sounds familiar to InsideEVs' readers, we should mention that Nissan's social media actually said things got underway in mid-November, but when we asked Nissan directly to confirm retail production had indeed begun in Smyrna, TN (because it was a few weeks earlier than we had expected), they said it had in fact had not, and apologized for the mix-up (and removed the corresponding tweet).

Along with the production announcement, Nissan released this infographic: