Way over Mileage in Year 1, Do I have any options

I leased a 2017 Audi A4 in July 2017, we’ve put 21,000 miles on it since then.

Any suggestions for best course of action. The options I see are:

  • Purchase miles at 0.25/mile
  • Plan to buyout the car at the end of the term

Are there any other options? What are the odds we can flip this car for a new lease?

Even if all the stars align and you don’t have negative equity why would you flip it into a new lease?

If you are driving this much you need to purchase the replacement for this Audi.

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You didn’t post what your contracted miles are (20k ?, 30k ? 45 k ?)

The other option is that when you hit your contracted (max) miles, you pay all the remaining lease payments, turn the car in with the correct contracted mileage, and be done with it. Depending on your situation this option could be less costly that paying mileage overage.

This mileage thing is one of the things that make leases not so great. You have to guess what mileage you’ll do over the next 2 or 3 years. And then things change. Note that you don’t get any credit for undershooting the contracted mileage.

The other thing that makes leasing a challenge is that you need something else to drive when the lease ends. And there may or may not be good deals to be had at that time.

Other threads here are discussing high mileage options. You can search, but there’s info in these:

Sorry contracted miles are 30k (36 month lease).

Yea not a typical year for us, we did a lot of unscheduled driving to visit family which tacks on 1000 miles round trip. I anticipate considerably less monthly mileage from here out, but we will still be over the allotted mileage by lease end

I’ve considered picking up another lease and basically using the A4 as a weekend car, but I was curious if there are other more creative ways of solving the problem.

I don’t know about Audi but some other OEMs let you purchase miles after the lease is signed ( for less than the overage penalty rate). It’s worth a call to find out.

Getting a second car won’t be the cheapest option. If you go over 20,000 miles on your current car, that will cost you 5,000 in overages, if you divide that by the remaining 24 months, that’s about 208 a month. That’s a lot of money, but you won’t be able to lease another good car that cheap, you’ll also have insurance to add to that, more lease beginning and ending fees. So I’d say just drive it, pay the overages unless you can trade it in somewhere for what your payoff is. Audi’s residuals are closer to accurate than most luxury cars, so it may not be terrible.

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Yea I looked at my contract and it looks as though I can purchase miles at 0.25/mile.

At my current rate I’ll hit +/- 54000 miles at lease end which would require me to purchase 18000 miles ($4500.00). unless I can pull up the lease early which would help.

Does anyone know if Audi lets you pull up early or is a dealer by dealer case?

Are you referring to a lease pull-ahead ? Those are done on a case by case basis depending on market conditions and how desperate they are to move some more metal. It’s another variant of rebates/incentives.

So which is it? 202020

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21,000 miles/13 months x 36 months = 58,000 at end at current rate. Or if 14 months have gone by 54,000 miles.

25 cents/mile sounds like penalty rate at end- I dunno. Paying that amount now doesn’t sound good.

I leased a Volt as a second car and it worked out great and was a nice car. Low payments plus dirt cheap to run, especially on a one pay lease ($1,300 discount).

You’ve only got 9,000 miles left to last you 23 months!

Find a cheap lease to supplement this one or just rent a car for these 1000 mile road trips. Since you only signed up for 10k/yr I assume you usually don’t drive much. I know VW will let you buy miles at a discounted rate during the lease, could always give Audi a call.

Good point on renting if it’ll take enough heat off. Looks like a lot of damage is already done. Another lease will need enough miles for the Audi to rest.

Find out how much extra miles are up front and how many miles per year you need for the next 2 and 3 years.

The overage miles will cost around $200 per month. A supplemental lease would need to be under that(including insurance) to even make sense.

Yeah but I wouldn’t want to drive an Audi out of warranty…$$$$$$

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true… 2202002202020

I guess it depends, if a 2nd vehicle made sense for the family, (specifically to take on the longer trips and/or other errands) then a cheap Terrain lease at $149 or some sort of hybrid would probably be the best way to go.

But if they don’t have a need for the 2nd vehicle I’d probably just look at renting a car for the bigger trips - I’ve been renting from Hertz since moving the US in December 2017 and it can be surprisingly cheap, plus you rack up their silly Hertz points for the occasional fun weekend rental. It’s a hassle though and only works if you’re nearby a rental facility really.

Or pay for ? services, tires, brakes…

A Volt could save a ton on gas.

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I guess it depends, if a 2nd vehicle made sense for the family, (specifically to take on the longer trips and/or other errands) then a cheap Terrain lease at $149 or some sort of hybrid would probably be the best way to go.

But if they don’t have a need for the 2nd vehicle I’d probably just look at renting a car for the bigger trips - I’ve been renting from Hertz since moving the US in December 2017 and it can be surprisingly cheap, plus you rack up their silly Hertz points for the occasional fun weekend rental. It’s a hassle though and only works if you’re nearby a rental facility really.

We planned on getting an SUV as a 2nd vehicle but not until late 2019/early 2020 so it might not be prudent to buy it this early. I’ll have a look at renting but we will have to be able to cross the border (Canada/US) with it which may be an issue.

You should be fine with the border issue. I used to live in Vancouver and found it mind numbingly boring so basically spent every other weekend in Seattle. I never once had an issue taking a rental car over the border in 18 months. (lots of other stupid immigration questions) Whenever I mentioned it was a rental it was never an issue. If anything it probably made border crossing easier as proves you were going back - even easier if you get NEXUS.