I have been doing a lot of research on this as I am very interested in leasing this. Honda ids giving a $6500 lease cash on this. The program identifier is HP-M23 for the lease cash. A lot of dealers are not aware as this is new. .00200 MF and 44%/43% residual for Base/Touring, for 36/15. Most dealers are advertising 2,999 on signing and 349 monthly plus tax. Which is very high ! I got a dealer in northern california advertising a good deal. It was zero down and 389 monthly plus tax for the Touring 12k miles for one Vin they had.
putting these in lease calculator gives 525 / month plus taxes for touring!! pLease share numbers if you have actually leased this.
I was previously considering the Clarity BEV, but I’m now leaning much more in favor of the PHEV after taking a test drive of the PHEV today, as well as reading owner reports of BEV range decreasing down to barely 60 miles with typical So Cal freeway driving.
It doesn’t seem that Honda is really passing along the $7500 federal credit–and even the HP-M23 lease cash is a bit short at $6500, so I’m comparing the numbers for an purchase vs a lease. The best lease deal I’ve seen advertised in my area is from Spreen Honda @ $249 for 36/12 with $3995 due at signing. That’s about $1500 less than the next best lease deal I’ve seen advertised so far ($319/month, $2999 at signing).
I’m wondering if anyone who is a Costco member has seen the Costco Auto purchasing price for the Clarity? I may check that out to help with weighing leasing vs purchase.
Hi,
I have Costco membership, but never saw any deals via Costco on the Clarity.
I actually purchased a clarity due to not wanting to get screwed out of rebates by Dealers/Manufacturers supposedly “including the rebate in the lease cost”. I just found every time the numbers didn’t stack up and I just didn’t believe they were passing the full rebate on.
With finance at 1.9% through Honda, and knowing there is over $9,000 in Federal, state and power company rebates, it just seemed like a no brainer to buy at that price. When you look at your repayment, you have to consider what you are saving in gas cost each month too. And ask yourself… even in the space of 12 months… is my car going to drop WAY MORE than $9,000 in value? (the rebate you get back) because it means as a purchase, I believe you should be in fairly safe territory.
I love the vehicle so far, I get free charging at work and can usually drive home and back all on total electricity (unless I do it at higher speed, in which case it burns through the power a little quicker and the last couple of miles would be on gas).
My work - home round trip is 39 miles. Basically if I stay under 80MPH I can do the whole lot on electric.
My dash readout is showing an average of 128.4MPG so far based on over 1,500 miles driven.
I have the touring model. Got $1,500 off the price through Long Beach Honda (Sales Rep was Vince)
Hope it helps.
why should they pass the whole rebate? if the life of the car is 9 years, why should we expect to get anymore than 1/3 the rebate? In practice, banks probably figured out pretty quickly that passing on the whole rebate was a losing proposition for them.
But it doesn’t even matter. Take my volt. my one pay lease (after in state rebates) cost me under $6K. best case scenario with same rebates + federal was around $20K for purchase. I don’t care that I didn’t get the full rebate, as I paid under 1/3 what the vehicle would have cost me otherwise.
You’re right… they don’t HAVE to pass on the whole rebate…
However… when they say they are doing so, then I hold them to that. So… Honda saying “our lease price is what it is because we are passing on the federal rebate to you”, then, I expect the numbers to add up.
I’m hoping you’re right as the lease to my wife’s Leaf is up in just over a year. If we’re lucky, that’s when we could potentially get a Clarity PHEV deal for her.
The major risk I see if that Honda will only focus on the CARB states for good incentives and lease deals. Certainly it was like pulling teeth getting a decent Volt lease for me in a non-CARB state, and I think right now Honda only has the $6500 rebate on those CARB states. In Virginia, nothing so far.
I’m pretty sure the lease you got for the Volt did include Chevy passing on the $7500 federal credit as a lower price on the car. Most EVs are seeing this benefit as lower lease costs, bringing them down to be closer to ICE vehicles. And that is the point of the federal credit, to incentivize getting an EV vehicle while current costs are high due to the new technology.
Honda right now isn’t really providing much incentive to get the Clarity PHEV, but I do expect that to change soon in order to start moving more of them off the lot.
When I got the car, there was 7150 in standard lease rebates on the volt, but only about $4500 of it was considered to be a kickback of federal credit. the rest was other gm incentives. Yes, they can juice the residual (i.e. we really think it should have 40% residual, but we’ll make it 50% instead because of the rebate), and that is really difficult for an outsider to evaluate.
Heads up on a financing tactic that I almost fell for today (applies to the purchase of any vehicles that qualify for the federal tax credit).
I was looking to purchase a Clarity PHEV and made an offer that was $4600 off of MSRP. I was pretty sure that it would not be successful. However, my salesman came back from the manager saying (as expected) that he was unable to do this much of a discount as a pure purchase BUT if we turned the deal into a lease where I paid a single month’s payment, and then a couple weeks later made a lump sum payment for the rest of the car, then the total purchase price would be in keeping with my offer. I was very surprised, but it certainly sounded good at first to be able to get the car at the low-ball price that I had offered.
But then I realized that if the deal was arranged as a lease–even if the car was purchased in full within a week–then I would not be able to obtain the $7500 federal tax credit, and in the end I would make out significantly worse than if I purchased in full at a higher price (which I did end up doing). I’m quite sure that the salesperson and manager were not intentionally trying to pull a fast one on me; they were simply trying to find a way to allow me to purchase the car in full at my desired price. In the end, I was still pretty pleased with the final negotiated price ($2100 off of MSRP).
I really doubt they didn’t know what they were doing. If they are not aware of the $7500 rebate, I don’t know who is. So they were going after that rebate, allowing them to “lower the price”, where in reality they were just using the rebate to lower the lease payment.
Looking for the deals on leasing the Clarity Hybrid (Touring Preferred ) I see that dealers not offering much as of now and lease rates are very high any insights to get best deals on this ?
As Nmikmik stated, patience is key. Don’t go in to the dealer with the expectation that you will be driving away with the new car; be ready to walk away if the numbers aren’t in line with what you’ve worked out in advance is a reasonable deal. We were literally about to get in my car to drive home when our salesperson came out to us with a final counter-offer that was very close to my offer. I honestly hadn’t planned to necessarily buy the car that day; I was expecting that we would have to wait for better incentives from Honda before a dealer would be willing to come down to my price, but apparently the dealer had a greater desire for us to leave with the car than we did, so we got a good deal.
EDIT: I should add that current Honda leases on their 2018 vehicles (like Accord and Clarity) are really bad. There may be more negotiating room with purchasing if you’re willing to take the long term risk on a new model.
@Nmikmik@kenoctech thanks …I agree that the deals are not good right now so i am willing to wait , may be March , april they will come up with some good incentives
I can’t nor want to try reverse engineering your deal, but I do know that in most cases absorbing negative equity into a new deal is a bad idea. If you have the $5300 to invest and must have that new car I’d rather pay that off before starting new lease otherwise it becomes perpetual negative equity. But of course it’s your money, so still your decision.
