Or, how we (with luck) gamed the rebate and credit and lease system to get two new Nissan Leafs during a 4 year period and paid a total of almost $Zero by the time everything was done.
[Edit]: There's an update way below about our third Leaf Lease. It didn't work out as well as the first two, still, with changing conditions not exactly a tragedy.
First let's point out that there was no cheating or bending the rules involved. Everything was done by the book. It's just that some of those rules don't always make the best sense and there's times when you can take advantage of that. Perhaps politicians were involved. ...just a guess... ;-)
Basically one of the reasons we lease Nissan Leafs (we're on our third one and 7th electric/or/hybrid car overall) is that we don't make enough money to qualify for the federal tax credit. Leases have that money taken 'off the top' so income isn't a factor.
When you reach the end of your lease period you have the option of paying off your lease for a pre-defined amount. If the market value of the car is higher than the pay-off amount it may be worthwhile to pay it off and then turn around and sell it (or keep it) rather than just turning it in at the end of the lease.
If the market value is WAY above the pay-off amount then you'd be crazy to not take advantage of that.
We're not crazy.
First car: early 2017 (2016.5?) 30KWh Leaf S 24mo. lease. 24K miles
Down payment + Tax/Title/Lic./Fees =$3690
23 Payments of $67 =$1540
Payoff Quote plus fees =$9120
Electricity (fast charging was free) =$520
Maintenance (Windshield wipers) =$18
Insurance =~$1200
Total Costs = $16,088 Sold vehicle for $16,400. Net cost (Gain!) $312
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Second car: late 2018 40KWh Leaf S 24mo. lease. 28K miles.
Down payment + Tax/Title/Lic./Fees =$5000
20 Payments of $203 =$4060
Payoff Quote plus fees =$10,200
Electricity (fast charging was free) =$630
Maintenance (1 free tire repair) =$0.00
Insurance =~$820
Total Costs = $20,710 less Oregon rebate of $2500 = $18,210
Sold vehicle for $17,500. Net cost $710
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So, total cost over 2 new cars and ~50K miles (and then some) was a bit under $400 or about 0.8 cents/mile. Keep in mind that the national average is between 40-65 cents/mi.
*Free? not quite, ...but -really- close.
There's also some fudge involved: We paid the 2nd car off early because we had a buyer and there were SWEET deals on the **2021 Leaf S ePlus 62KWh available.
Buyer: When you give someone a ride in a less-than-two year old electric car and they find out they could own it for under $18K when they 'know' it sold new for $33K, well, they get somewhat excited.
...And are willing to wait for the lease finalization process (two months!),
Also note that we paid slightly too much for the second lease, having purchased 15K mi./yr. when we only ended up needing 14K, but I guess that's pretty close. Also there may be two months of electricity that went unrecorded. My bad. Doesn't change the conclusion. Yes all the numbers are rounded off.
Note that we were REALLY lucky with the second car. The not so great deal was 'saved' by the Oregon Rebate being available -and- the COVID period causing used car values to balloon a couple thousand dollars. So, I don't want to give the impression we had this all planned out. Yes we were lucky. And yes we did keep an eye on things and wait until the prices got really compelling. If we'd been in a hurry or had worse luck with timing, then costs would have 'soared' to $0.20/mi. Note that's still half of the national average.
YMMV - to the max.
** Are we going to be as lucky with the new 2021 Leaf S ePlus 62KWh? See below. The nominal discounted selling price of that was ~$38K instead of the ~$28K that the other two started at. Yes, they 'charge' a bunch for the bigger battery. As a result the payoff amount at end of lease is over $19K and the monthly (for a 36 mo. lease with15K/yr) charge is a bit higher. That's gonna be a difficult hole to fill. We'll see.
OK, here's the update on the third Leaf. As expected it's not a bad story, just not as awesome (free driving is rare ;-) as the first two.
The Oregon Rebate covered most of the $3K down payment, including the fees, licensing - etc. Total remaining plus the $229/mo. over 36 months and 45K miles plus end-of-lease fees came to -just- below $10K.
...or just over 22 cents/mile. Once insurance and electricity and two tires ($186, yes they were awful tires) are added we're at 28 cents/mile. Compared with national averages this is still a pretty good number.
The alternative was to buy it out ($18.2K) but with used prices having node-dived for all used cars post-Covid it was effectively only worth around $13-14K as a private party sale.
This, plus the opportunity to evaluate wether a car is worth keeping, is the whole point of leasing a vehicle IMHO.
The car was doing great. Battery degradation was reasonable (6-8% at a guess) and CCS to CHaDeMo charging adapters are finally available, granted at $600+. But even with a clunky adapter you're still charging slowly, and as you'll see elsewhere on this blog a one-year-newer Tesla Model 3 is $15K. It's a no-brainer. Nissan Finance can have it back.
Just as a side note to Nissan: If they had put a CCS fast charging port on it and dropped the buy-out by a couple thousand, we'd have thought really hard about keeping it. Neither of those happened and we didn't.
Guess you could look at this whole seven year period as 100K miles for under $14K. Most people pay $40-$60K all in for a similar time and distance.
Worse things have happened... kinda First World Problems, eh?
WAY TO GO! I feel silly with my gas guzzling motors, which I keep buying because they are "cheaper" (my old, used versions) than the hybrids. Wrong, obviously.
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