KS resident here. As I’m looking at the pre-packaged deals, I’m noticing that the Midwest isn’t represented. Are there specific problems associated with hacking leases in the Midwest? Are there brokers who work this region? We’re searching for lower-priced EVs. We’re not interested in leasing if it’s not a good deal – we’ll buy instead. I don’t want to go down this rabbit hole any further if I have a pretty low chance of succeeding or it’s going to be extremely labor-intensive (don’t have enough spare time). The starting offers for leases in the area, when I’ve sent out emails, don’t look good so far, but I haven’t countered anything. Thank you in advance for letting me know your thoughts!
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My impression is that there isn’t much dealer competition in the Midwest, which is why there’s not much posted here from that area.
Have you tried creating a target deal that’s aggressive but realistic and offering that (instead of asking for deals)?
You can always contact a broker who works in a different geographic and ask if they’ll ship.
Iowa here and understand your pain! Just make sure with EV you look at the insurance first–you might be shocked at how much they charge. My insurance rate went up by 2g for basic coverage for the eqs deals
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Just factor in up to an extra $1,000 for shipping and look for out of state deals that will ship. If you add up the savings you will likely be further ahead.
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I’ve had this sticker shock as well - it’s wild how expensive insurance can be.
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Honestly, it has been one of the biggest reasons why I have been staying away from EVs deals and the limited number of dealers in my areas–given they barely sell EV’s, not sure if the servicing departments could handle any problems without prolonged resolution times.
I was looking for an EV lease deal in the Midwest as well and had no luck: went with a Cayenne Turbo S E Hybrid that leased better lol. Maybe I’ll get lucky on the Gen 2 Taycans in future.
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Yes, you need a critical mass of dealership density and competition, and willingness to skip per-unit profit margins to focus on volume bonuses.
Even in the “better” markets it can be time intensive and your chances of scoring an LH deal are like 1 in 10 or 1 in 20.
Given all the constraints mentioned above, your best bet may be paying broker fees and shipping as infrequently as possible. Lease and then immediately buy out something like a Hyundai Ioniq, extend the warranty and own it for like 10 years.
we moved to KS last year and I have the exact same feeling.
Most of the dealers here are not willing to play balls and the service(even luxury brands) sucks 
If I’m serious in the market, I probably will just to with out-of-state dealers and get it shipped instead of wasting my energy with local ones.
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Where ya at ? MN dealers dont like to play ball
Asking for quotes is a waste of time.
Figure out which incentives apply to you, and what an aggressive dealer discount looks like for your target vehicle, and make informed unambiguous offers.
The Midwest is among the regions with the weakest EV demand.
In June I got a taker on my first offer on a Blazer EV in Ohio.
If necessary expand your search radius, but stop asking for quotes. The main problem here isn’t geography, it’s approach.
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Can you expand on this a bit? How would you like to be approached?
I think the deals are different in the midwest for imports and domestics. I’ve been able to get excellent deals on domestic cars in Michigan, but absolutely none on imports (specifically luxury). Never tried with a more basic brand.
I was speaking broadly about EVs, as that’s what OP is shopping for.
I couldn’t get anything put together locally when I leased my 7 Series.
First dealer I contacted in the DMV area, though, took my offer, so I flew into DCA and drove that one home.
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I was just encouraging OP to abandon the fruitless exercise of asking for prices, and pivot to making informed offers instead.
Does that clarify?
I agree with you. locally, I got excellent deals on domestic EVs. I’ve had more competitive offers from import dealers in OH, then MI. MI is terrible. I got a better deal on an infiniti out of CT, than i did in MI with employee pricing (they gave MI resident employee pricing at the time)
The local Nissan, VW and Kia dealers where we did test drives were also really eager to move EVs, but to be fair we didn’t make any offers on those because we didn’t want any of their cars (especially the ghastly EV6).
I think so. Here is what I’ve done on a few vehicles in the past:
- Research what we want, what ballpark list prices are, what mfg incentives to dealer are and then advertised incentive;
- Look at forums to see what others are paying; and
- Email offer to dealer for either specific vehicle or the specs I want to order. I include my payment terms (usually cash, but that doesn’t help on a lease site) as well. I generally shoot for the lower 25% of documented deals expecting a counter offer that gets me to the average of documented deals.
Is that sort of what you’re suggesting?
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That’s basically it, yeah.
For #1 you’d use dealer discount (we may be saying the same thing).
With a lease I always use base MF (not marked up) when constructing an offer, but either way you’re defining what you’re willing to pay on a total-lease-cost basis (higher discount can compensate for marked up MF).
And of course you want to avoid all of the add-ons like the plague.
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Who doesn’t like playing balls?
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