My situation: I have a 36-month lease on a 2015 Nissan Leaf that ends May 31. I’ve been researching MF/RV/incentives for leasing a 2018 Leaf, and we visited a dealership last weekend (the same one that leased us the 2015).
To make things more interesting, Washington state currently has a sales and use tax exemption on the purchase or lease of EVs, but it expires May 31. Starting June 1, EV lease payments will be subject to a 10% sales tax.
We want to lease a 2018 Leaf SV with the SV Technology package for 36 months and 15K miles/year. I’ve attached a copy of the lease they offered us (it’s for 15K, even though it shows 12,000 for ‘Program Miles’).
According to Edmunds, the MF/RV for a 2018 Leaf SV is 0.00003/42% for 36 months/15K. The incentives are $3150 Lease Cash, $1,000 Dealer Cash, and $1,000 Customer Loyalty ($5150 total).
From reading here (and the lease calculator), I’m pretty sure we should be able to get this car for $3000 down and ~$300/month.
This dealer is quoting us $3000 down and $402.55 / month. One thing that’s driving up the price is the $1195 “Bellevue Protection Package”. This is a dealer option that’s supposed to protect the paint and upholstery, and (conveniently enough), they say it’s already been applied to every car on their lot.
The other thing I notice is that they’re not giving us the $1000 Dealer Cash incentive.
We hung around until closing time, and the finance guy finally offered not to charge us for the Protection Package, which would bring the monthly payment down to about $370. Better, but still too high - if they’d offered $350/month, I probably would go for it, just get the deal done.
The finance guy wouldn’t budge, so we left. We have another car (a 2017 Mazda 3), so we can do without the Leaf if we need to (and we told the sales / finance guys).
Question: Assuming we still want to lease a new Leaf before May 31, what’s our next action? My thoughts:
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I want to negotiate on a car that doesn’t have the over-priced Protection Package. As it is, the finance guy can say he’s already given up $1200, so there’s no room left to negotiate on the price of the actual car. There’s another Nissan dealer about 15 min. away that has at least one equivalent car - do we ask the first dealer to get that car from the second dealer?
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They’re not giving us the extra $1000 incentive. I didn’t call that out when we were talking to them, because it’s not something that Nissan publicly advertises, so they can deny it exists.
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The sales tax thing adds an interesting angle. It’s definitely a problem for us (since it would add 10% to our lease payments), but I think it’s an even bigger problem for the dealer. On June 1, suddenly every Leaf on his lot costs 10% more (they have an inventory of about 60 Leafs). It seems unlikely that a dealer would pass the full 10% on to the customer, so I’d imagine they’re going to have to eat some of that tax, which means making less money on each Leaf. In that case, it seems they’ll be trying to sell as many as they can by May 31.
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Do we wait them out, and let them make the next move?
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Do we just forget Dealer 1, and go visit Dealer 2? I don’t mind driving 15 minutes to save a few thousand dollars.
Thoughts? Suggestions?
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