One reason to argue about Nissan is how much they've let their head start stagnate.

The Leaf was Ghosn's baby and some of the ouster of Ghosn was Japanese Nissan leadership getting cold feet about EVs (because none of their Japanese peers cared about EVs "so why should they?") right at the point in time where they should have accelerated. (The EV concerns being on top of/correlated with conspiracy theories that Ghosn was too friendly with French-owned Nissan sibling Renault because they were just about all-in on EVs and Ghosn was hoping for early economies of scale, faster, but that looked to Japanese investors too much like a French coup for Nissan ownership. Also, my favorite alleged part of that conspiracy was Ghosn saw Nissan of America as an SUV/Truck-loving albatross around Nissan's neck and suggested that the very profitable division get renamed back to Datsun to make it easier to pull the ripcord and jettison the entire division once EVs started to get popular enough and its absurd profits became absurd losses.)

I don't know if the truth will ever come out how much of a crook Ghosn was or was not, versus the spin of the Japanese court system and many conspiracy theories that came out of all that, but that saga definitely seemed to put the breaks on Nissan's EV efforts at a bad moment and they do seem to be lagging behind where they should be considering their head start with the Leaf. It's a fascinating story no matter what the facts were on the ground.

Leaf is decidedly not awesome. The lack of liquid cooling means it runs into thermal limits very easily and battery degradation has been a real issue for them. CHAdeMO is arguably the better spec, but since it's a dead plug for north america and can't handle AC people with leafs are going to find themselves tethered very close to home.

If someone needs a commuter only car they are okay, but I think I'd get a bolt over a leaf if I wanted a cheap used commuter EV.

Yes. It would be fine if the Leaf was cheaper. But at least around here, Leaf costs Tesla money, and getting worse product for the same money makes no sense.

They let their rollout lag significantly, pinning things on one model for a long time. There was likely some internal corporate politicking involved.