First of all, I understand this topic has been discussed multiple times and suggestion is to buy rather than lease.
Adding few more datapoints and need some advise:
State - WA (no sales tax upto 25k for Model 3)
Lease - Model 3 RV is now 69.3% with 0.0023 MF (pretty bad). So with 1st month due and upfront fees, lease payment will come around $475 per month.
Buy - With lowest rate of 1.99% for 84 month (need to confirm if I qualify), payment would be around $500 per month.
Assume, I need car for 36 months only. For buy option, I will still left with $22k balance and if it sells close to $25k then both lease and buy will be similar. My personal hunch says EV will deprecate more after 3 years and it will be difficult to get $25k as well. Just hoping I am wrong here.
Am I missing anything or setting really low resale value after 3 years?
Is it do you pay $475/mo for 3 years and end up with no car vs $500/mo for 7 years and then own the car outright? If so, I see a strong case to lease!
If the bank is telling you the car will lose a tremendous amount of value in 3 years, I believe, although not linear, that the car will hold very little value after 7 years. Keep in mind after 3 years of driving you will probably need new tires. Call it $650 installed. You probably need to do that again. Maybe not. $1,300 in tires for 7 years. Maybe a battery? $200. Some misc maintanence? Maybe another $2,000 in that time frame?
Using $3.5k in expenses and having paid $25 extra per month for the first 36 months we are almost at another $1k. It adds up!
$500 x 84 = $42,000.
$3,500 for tires, battery and misc = $45,500
Assumed sale of a 7 year old EV with maybe 84,000 miles? I dunno? $5k, $10k? Call it $7.5k
So you spent $45,500 but you reclaimed $7,500 for a net of $38,000. Divide by 84 months and your monthly âpaymentsâ are actually $452.
The question becomes do I pay $475/mo or $452/mo⌠lease this baby
Thanks for detailed response and numbers. Even my calculations says lease is better (atleast with 69% RV) and I donât need to worry about depreciation and if I like EV, I will buy newer model after 3 years.
Just wanted confirmation from experts that I am not missing any point for comparison