Hey Folks, been a few years since I’ve been on but wanted to get your thoughts on these lease vs finance deals.
I suggested my wife lease and do a business write-off, but she is not a car person and has not had a vehicle payment in years. She talked about a lease then said well maybe I want to buy it after. Wanted to get any feedback or thoughts on it all.
she has a charger at her office, about 12 miles each way to the office, not much stop and go, usually a good flow. she doesn’t need all the bells and whistles but I figured prem plus with warm weather is a good package. (I’ve had an sq5, a4 and rs5 in the past but always financed and flipped it in 2 years).
My thought is lease is the way to go and get out of it after, but if she wants to keep it, then finance is the route.
You’re definitely on the right track with lease. Do not buy if not planning to keep long term, especially a German make that will depreciate very fast.
Sounds like your wife is more about easy to drive small SUV and comfort creatures than a “driver’s” car. Look into deals on the Marketplace at full EV offers that should be more modern and cheaper than a Q5e. Q4 E-Tron comes to mind, then Cadillac Lyric, Ioniq 5, Lexus RZ300e, Nissan Ariya, etc. On the other hand, you could go more upscale for a bit more with Q8, Q6, EQE, IX, etc. If her business is profitable, post-tax difference will be rather minor.
Appreciate it. Yeah I have a friend who’s a sales manager at Acura and he gave me a great lease deal on the ZDX, but she decided she doesn’t want full electric. And now, I’m even debating if her commute makes sense to offset the extra cost of the phev compared to gas. Outside of city commute it defeats the purpose.
Will have a look at some other models most likely, I’ve been trying to package a deal and get one to commit on an s4 for me, but it gets too messy.
You should decide before day one what your strategy is and pick a vehicle accordingly. There’s almost no vehicle where the best strategy is to buy it at the end of a lease.
The Q5e is a much better choice than a regular Q5 or probably even an SQ5 as long as you plug it in and take advantage of the electric power to reduce gas expense. The lease deals on the Q5e are simply lower cost. The Q5e has more total power than the SQ5 and that does not disappear as soon as the battery is discharged. The battery is never really empty and continues to provide power when needed.
You are not going to want to own this out of warranty, so treat it as a disposable expense for 2 years.
The hassle of electric charging is the killer, the ZDX would be the best for a lease, but expecting her to remember to charge would be a task.
Leasing make sense, but in the end she doesn’t like a car payment. She will probably end up using her car until it dies and lose about a 10k opportunity cost by having to do maintenance on her car and miss out on trade in value.
I’m doing a final look at XC60 plugins that are discounted big and giving her the nugget that she doesnt want to own a hybrid just yet, so lease is the way to go.
She’s avoiding the steepest part of the depreciation curve on a new car while she retains her current car (presumably cheaper insurance too)
When she’s ready maybe a Lexus hybrid is a good choice if she’s not willing to go BEV (although based on her commute it may require only one charge per week and that hardly seems onerous even if you take on the responsibility of plugging in at home).
Now that many companies are offering 0.9 or 1.9% APR financing it’s only a matter of time before Lexus does too. That may not be the worst reason to wait.
This woman will forget i’m sure, she has a couple dental offices she owns, she forgets to eat half the time lol.
i test drove an xc60 phev yesterday, quite impressive, but the volvo dealers around are not giving much discount other than the rebates. Even a service loaner s60 plugin with 2200 miles they are only giving 2k off msrp on top of the ev rebate.
Both the Q5e and XC60 are on ancient platforms. Honestly no point looking at either unless they’re on fire sale + you qualify for the rebates that make them cheap leases such as loyalty/conquest, Costco, R PIN, etc etc
But I still don’t know why you’re looking at these cars when your wife keeps saying she doesn’t payments.
I have a 70.1k msrp xc60 t8 ultra lined up for 778/month, 36/10, 0 down. denim blue with amber interior, a few polestars fell through. May move forward tomorrow
