I need someone to talk some sense into me or play devils advocate. I currently have a pretty much fully loaded 2023 i4 M50. At the time I bought the car there wasn’t the lease tax credit loop and the North America battery legislation was already in effect. Taking that into consideration and chip shortages, I got the best deal I could get all things considered: $1,000 off MSRP and 1.9% finance rate.
I love the car and I thought I was ready to go all EV but a huge part of me misses an ICE vehicle. Had I not already pre-ordered the i4 I would’ve tried to grab the M3 competition xdrive. I would LOVE a Porsche but at my budget I could probably really only swing a Macan or Cayenne. How’s the market and allocations for the M3 Cx? Would I be completely foolish to let go of my 1.9% apr to get back into an ICE?
Dropped like a falling sword unfortunately which was one of the pros of holding onto it but it seems to have stabilized and payoff looks to be close to trade-in value.
Agreed, unless the vehicle is absolutely rubbish and a burden to operate, it doesn’t make financial sense to exit the vehicle at this time.
Financing with a loan or a straight cash purchase is an approach that often results in this unfortunate situation where the customer is locked in for the long haul.
Assuming lease money factor is similar to a loan APR, the more flexible decision would be to lease a vehicle. Then, save the cash-difference between the monthly lease payment and the monthly loan installment payment that the customer would have otherwise entered into.
This way, the customer retains the flexibility to exit the vehicle relatively early at the end of the lease term if they do not like the car. Or the customer will have a reasonable level of savings to finance/acquire the vehicle at the end of the lease term.
I would say test drive the ICEVs you are considering multiple times and really push them. Often BEV and ICEV performance look similar enough on paper but the ICEV needs to be really pushed to get there (red line in every gear, for example). And then consider how many times you’ll do that and how often that will require filling up.
And then the steering response of a front engined car with all that weight between you and the front can be very different to a true BEV with almost all that weight underneath you instead and it turns almost like a mid engined car.
After 2 years of 90% BEV driving I have found that my only “range anxiety,” if you can call it that, is my displeasure of thinking about touching something as nasty as a gas pump. Nothing beats the serenity of starting out every day with a “full tank” ie 80% SOC. Ofc I’d happily pump gas for something as iconic as a rear- or mid-engined Porsche but for a mass-produced front-engined car lacking great steering IDK
TLDR comes down to personal preference but really really test out your next choice so you don’t regret it.
I absolutely see your points. Having an EV certainly has a lot of pros. I’m fortunate enough to have reliable dirt cheap charging at work so while people stress about rising gas prices it’s been a non issue for me. I also love the instant response and smooth highway driving.
I test drove an M3 cx to a great extent and I felt some regret with my decision to go EV. Plus the older I get the more I admire Porsche design and engineering. I guess I’m just trying to rationalize making an impulse decision to scratch the itch of getting into an M or starting my journey into the world of Porsche but I thank the LH community for being so rational. I guess I’ll have to wait it out a bit unless by some miracle there’s a “unicorn”’deal.
What do you miss about ICE vehicles? The only thing I miss is the range but as long as whatever road trip I go on only requires one charge stop, it works out pretty well.
There’s definitely something about the sound of a throaty V8, personally I like the instant torque of EV’s and virtually no maintenance. I can be stuck behind someone on a steep mountain pass and once there’s a gap I can instantly accelerate around them.
When an ICE has issues, it’s usually a CEL and some alert to get service. In the worst case when the ignition terminates or the fuel delivery stops while in motion, a ICE car still has some hydraulic boost in the brakes and power steering rack.
When an EV eats sh!t, it just shuts off. You can’t muscle the car to pull over and the braking system doesn’t give you any boost. When our Model X shut down on the highway, it was almost impossible to muscle over to the side of the road. The same scenario played out with a family that has their kid in our day care. They went off the road and into some shrubs because they couldn’t steer the car.
With ICE, you can just kick a car to neutral and get to some safe side of the road. EV isn’t so good.
That’s the thing with Porsches, the model itself doesn’t really matter, IMHO. It’s the trim that counts. Give me a “lowly” Macan GTS or Turbo over a base 911 any day, and twice on Sunday. Base anything Porsche is kinda meh.
I owned a Panamera Turbo for a while and it was one of the most amazing cars ever. Acceleration, wow. But also the luxury and build quality was off the charts. Of course it was a $180K MSRP car, well over $200K in today’s dollars (and no I didn’t buy it new). But my point is it wasn’t just a Panamera. It was a PANAMERA! because it was the turbo trim.
And that’s the problem, as soon as I start speccing a build to my liking I go from an 90k base to 140k with options. We already have an SUV in the household so as fun as a Macan GTS would be I’m more interested in a coupe or sedan. One way or another I want to be a Porsche guy - I just don’t want to start with a base of any model. Maybe I need to find a CPOd unit.
Or if you want to live on the wild side buy one out of warranty. It’s exhilarating, ask me how I know.
The other thing to know is even with the trim, it’s still kinda base. Porsche is pretty much all a la carte in terms of options. Even basic stuff like heated seats is an option in some (most) of them. You’d think that would be standard on a $70, 80K car. But you’d be surprised.
And as you well know I’m sure being a BMW owner, maintenance is not cheap. $2K services using an Indy shop for instance. With a CPO - or any used one - try to go for ones that have just had a major service, and avoid ones that are due for one soon.
As someone who has both an EV & a manual ICE car (plus wife’s ICE SUV), I really don’t see much value in ICE if it’s automatic. You hear the engine and the gears shifting somewhere down in there by themselves, but if you’re not doing the shifting, it doesn’t make enough of a difference to me.
Basically if it’s automatic anyway, might as well just go EV. Just my humble opinion.
Hear hear, I have e46. While I do love the sound it makes, I find my eqb has good enough acceleration & power for my need. I still prefer sport sedan and may have to bite the bullet and get i4 (I hate that grill) I hope bmw put a battery on G20 instead.
It’s exhilarating, ask me how I know.