Ok, this is going to sound very odd, but I was cleaning out a stack of papers in my office, and I found the original deal proposal provided to me from my local Cadillac dealer on my Lyriq that I leased. This was back in May and I had a hint that congress was going to get rid of the EV tax credit, but it wasn’t a done deal yet, and I needed to lease another car because someone hit my Honda Prologue while it was parked in front of a friend’s house and totaled it.
Of course, many of us always go for the best payment. I originally was proposed $800/mo for a Sport 2 dealer demo with 4100 miles and I just laughed and started walking out and the sales person told me “let me see what I can do”, and he came back with $413 a mo w 2k out the door. I went home and slept on it and came back a couple days later and signed and drove away.
At the time, I didn’t pay much attention to the 36 month option they proposed, but it was only $58 more per month then the 24 month option. The residual on the 24 is $48,592 but the 36 is $43,720.
Obviously the residual only matters if you plan on keeping the car, and since this was my first Cadillac in my life, I had no idea but now I really do love the car and would want to keep it longer, knowing that there are going to be very few, if any, deals on EV’s like this in two years when my lease is up.
What doesn’t make sense is why the payment change between 24 and 36 months does not equal the residual, where does that almost 3k go? I realize there is a good chance in 3 years that this car will not be worth $43,720 so it probably wouldn’t have been a good deal to lease longer.
I suppose the bottom line is who wants to pay ~$700 a month to finance a car after leasing it for $400? Not many people I know! So, hopefully there will be some good lease deals, or I can just turn it back in and find a good deal on a used EV.