I bought my Tesla at the height (Sept 2022) a few months before EV credit announcement and all the drops. Thought I was sticking it to the dealerships because they all wanted $10k markup but in the end, everyone stuck it to me.
I’m trying to find the cheapest EV I can roll my massive (20k) negative equity into. I’m hoping to have it around the same payment. Preferably not a Leaf cause I have 2 kids and 2 car seats.
We just picked up a Blazer EV for $251 a month so preferably not that as well.
Do you hate the car? If you don’t hate it, you’re better off driving it until it dies.
Better to stick out a shitty payment and own it at the end, than to swap it, get rid of negative equity, and also lose ownership at the end of the lease.
Unless you’re swimming in money and don’t mind paying even more to fix the mistake. But if that were the case you would probably simply eat the negative equity.
$860/month x 60 months (5 years), own the car at the end
$850/month x 24 months (2 years), eliminates negative equity, but no car at the end. This doesn’t account for your new car’s payment, which will be more payments.
If you can suck it up and just keep driving your car, you’re essentially paying $30k to buy your own used car.
It’s not a bad bet since you would avoid any further auto debt and own your car at the end. Depends if you’re willing to keep it 10 years or more.
I assume that you finance/buy the tesla. So pay it off, and keep driving it assume no major problem with it will be the most economical option for you. Depreciation will be slowed with time for most of cases, but you never know about these EV for residual value, not very predictable.
Assuming you got a 60 month loan almost two years ago, in three years you should come out well ahead - the Tesla will still be under power train warranty so it won’t be of zero value.
Big question: do you have GAP insurance? It would really suck if it got totaled today.
You’re almost always negative on a new car. That’s part of the price of cycling through brand new cars. The difference with a lease is that the break even date is fixed.
bz4x is about the only thing with enough incentives and a low enough MF to consider rolling that into… of course, then you’ll be paying $1000/mo+ for a bz4x, which is a fate worse than death.
And you’ll get the pleasure of paying tax and rent charge on your negative equity, making it even worse than it is.
I’d only consider this if I was struggling to make the current payments (on the precipice of default) and need to buy more time and lower the monthly payment. In this case I wouldn’t swap for another short-term lease, but for a purchase loan for an affordable model with a low subsidized interest rate out (do these still exist?!) over 5-7 years, so that I’d keep my credit in good condition.
Otherwise the only risk is a total loss if you don’t have gap insurance, in which case you should consider getting that for yourself.
