Tesla Model 3 Lease vs Buy

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?

Which version of Model 3 are we talking about?

Basic model. Standard range plus. This will be 2nd car and primarily use for office commute (40 miles per day)

Lease term : 36 month/10000 miles

Car MSRP - $39190 (including delivery fee)

County Tax (Seattle) - 1.1%

Total cost - $41300

Lease and Loan upfront - $2000

Leaehackr score - 6.4 years

Is a Tesla even hackable? Who can you even negotiate with? lol

What exactly is the question?

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 “payments” are actually $452.

The question becomes do I pay $475/mo or $452/mo… lease this baby

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Thanks for detailed response and numbers. Even my calculations says lease is better (atleast with 69% RV) and I don’t 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 :grinning:

Yeah. 2 year old one is for $30-32k (random VIN offers from carvana and vroom). Same range and features for new car is around $40k.

Is this the cheapo model without the self driving crap? If so what’s the point? Just lease a Bolt

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No this one just has normal bullsh$3 ‘autopilot’. 39.5k doesn’t have ‘fsd’, that’s 6k add on iirc

Maybe add FSD later and who knows if Tesla comes up with subscription service for FSD.

Lease a different less expensive car or lease I nicer car for the same money.

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Aren’t you forgetting the ~10% state tax on the amount over $25k?

Above amount includes 10% sales tax above 25k.

MSRP - 39190
County Fee - 418
Registration- 149
Sales tax - 1543

Total - 41300

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Or a Fart :red_car:

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