Was taking a look at lease options for Rivian, Polestar, etc. and they all seem to be suggesting you should put down $5-6K. Is this them just trying to make the lease payment look reasonable? Are folks actually putting a huge chunk of change down on these leases?
You move that $5-6K down to $0 and their $6xx a month lease is more like a high $8xx a month lease. So stupid. Just advertise the car for what it’s worth with no money down.
Same reason brokers use down payments here…marketing psychology
Most evs have very low mfs. So it’s foolish to put money down on them.
I’ve questioned that often about the brokers on this site. They know they’re on a lease hacking site where we’re looking for deals without down payments. Only leads me to ignore their “deals”.
Which begs the questions, why are you looking at advertising? And Rivian is not a hackable brand. If you want one, you know exactly what it costs. The distribution of the total cost across DAS and monthly is not really material here.
Polestar has a couple brokers in the NYC tristate area who are or were hacking it. Anyone in CA in the Marketplace ?
Outside of an easy and cheap deal there’s no reason to look at PS either. Lot of work for a beta product with lots of teething pains IMO. If the tax credits die soon your next EV could be your last cheap EV lease. Don’t waste that opportunity. So many choices right now.
Lots of reputable brokers on here can get you a very good lease with $0 down, $0 DAS and 0 MSDs.
That will help you tremendously if you are cash poor up front.
I’m looking at too many vehicles at the moment because I have no idea what I actually want to drive. I ski, so something with AWD. Have two months left to extend my 4XE Rubicon. Would get into another but the cost is not worth it. I’ve only driven the Jeep about 17K miles in 40 months (less than 5K a year) so I’m bumping up against the idea of paying more for a luxury vehicle since I clearly wouldn’t be in it much. But I don’t want a shit car either.
Started thinking about the full EV’s this week and was pricing them out today. Got pissed off by the misleading marketing.
@max_g what are the top three EV deals you know about out there right now?
The only vehicle I’m excited about atm is the Scout coming in two years. 
You should be looking into a PHEV
Most people actually aren’t.
If that’s what you want, just ask.
Oh, I’ve looked at them as well. Any particular ones that you like?
If you are looking for Cheap AWD PHEV, well maybe a Dodge Daytona (Do they still have these?)
Of course as sales vary, you might have to work for these deals
For Example I got a Hyundai Tucson Limited PHEV for ~$420 with a one pay 6 months ago, but I don’t think that deal will happen nowadays as the 2024s are gone.
Um, you’ve been on LH for 9 years….which means at this point either mentally in your head or in the LH calculator it should take a total of 30 seconds to figure out the effective monthly cost.
Some vehicles have a low mf and some high…if it’s high it is sometimes far more beneficial to pay inceptions, MSD’s or one pay. The good thing by being a hacker is you can figure it out what’s right for your situation on 30 seconds.
Their isn’t a right or wrong answer as you long as you know why your doing it. Maybe you want to finance / roll it in on everything in life and just pay the higher monthly. Or you could be like me and a few others on here, notably @trism who will go to great lengths to minimize interest / finance costs in life.
Reserved mine in mid May. Are they really saying two years??
Once one broker does it the others follow to be competitive for the noobs that cant do the math quickly in their head (aka marketing psychology works very well).
Back in the day it was usually $0 das
Worst case it was inception due at signing or MSD only.
Lots of talk about never putting down on a lease because if in an accident or stolen ur money was gone.
Cant blame the brokers - its the new users who like a low monthly payment and don’t care about calculator or total cost
Yah, lots of people like to make blanket rules of thumb without thinking them all the way through.
Choosing to capitalize non-taxable fees so that you get to increase their cost by 10% is not the cheapest way to self-insure against a really low risk event.
Most of the brokers end up advertising a number that roughly works out to inceptions up front rather than additional cap cost reductions, which normalizes things a bit more across states.
We advertise with $3k due at signing as inceptions are like 2595 and we just round up to the nearest 500 hundred
It’s not even trying to be shady or advertise a lower payment - it’s just an easier whole number
If it’s 2233 we go up to $2500 etc etc
Not to sound like a broken record, but you should always read the fine print.
Did you put a deposit down? I reserved the Traveler SUV when it was announced last year. I’m currently driving a Hyundai Ioniq 5.
