Is it ever worth it to lease less miles (knowing that you are going to go over the limit), and just eat the excess mileage fee rather than paying for it upfront?
For example:
I am currently comparing a 24/10k lease vs a 24/12k lease for a Cadillac Lyriq. Going up to the 24/12k adds $750 to the overall lease price (looking at one pays). However, excess miles are charged at $0.25 per mile, meaning if I get a 24/10k lease, drive 10k miles and then an additional 2k miles on top of that, I would only be charged $500. In these cases, shouldn’t you just always lease the lower mileage limit even if you already know you are going to exceed it? I know some other cars/brands charge even lower excess mileage fees like $0.15 or $0.20 per mile, which would make it even more worth it to do this.
I just don’t know if there is some catch like they will add on excess wear and tear fees if you do this which will make it no longer worth it.
Hoping to get your opinions on this and thanks so much!
On a 24/10k lease you are allowed 20k miles over the lease term. On a 24/12k lease you are allowed 24k miles over the lease term. This is a 4k mile difference for your $750, not a 2k mile difference. If you exceed your mileage cap by 4k miles you get penalized $1,000 assuming a rate of $0.25/mi, more than the $750 upfront cost to buy those miles if you know you are going to use them
Oh hey! I saw that you were one of the people who grabbed an amazing 2024 Lyriq lease… You got 25% off MSRP? I was hoping to propose ~19% off MSRP for a 2024 Lyriq that has 1000 miles, although I’m worried that they will blow me off if my offer is too aggressive and think that I’m not a serious buyer. When you approached them with your deal did you just straight up propose a one pay amount of around $4700 and then include all your incentives and zip/tax rate? Or did you start by negotiating the sales price of the car first, and then telling them all your incentives afterwards?
Or on high MSRP cars (over $100k) it can be cheaper and/or more flexible to lease with the lowest mileage allotment and pay the extra mile charge as needed.
Yep there are definitely nuances here that I did not originally address. For example, on Audi e-tron GTs the 1% hit on residual value to buy a higher mileage term would be more than buying the additional miles that you drive over a lower mileage term.
Technically my sales price was around 29% off MSRP and then they added in some bs dealer protection package that then made my net discount closer to 25% off. To be honest I think I just got kind of lucky with my dealership. They just happened to list the car for a really low internet price. I didn’t do anything negotiating whatsoever. I just told them to give me a one pay quote based on my rebates. When they initially came back to me they told me they wouldn’t do the deal unless I added another $500 of lease end protection so I just threw that on there as well.
