Looking for New Leaf ...

I live in Phoenix. I want to buy Leaf because I can drive on HOV lane and save $200 gas per month.

When I search in internet, I read good deals like $11K lease cash or $5000 cash back.
But when I call dealership I hear lot of BS and none of them are worth to consider. For example, one dealer yesterday quoted me a price of $28K + tax.
Fed up with all these and tried Truecar.com. It gave a quote of $31K.

Can anyone help me to get a good price. I can drive to CA, if that is needed.
1. Looking for SV.
2. I am looking for buying or leasing and buying at the end of the lease.

Any inputs are appreciated.

Make a spreadsheet of who you talked to and what they said.
Talk to different salesmen. Some are full of bull and others not so much.
Try email instead of phone and quote the $5K discount offer.
Are you sure you want to buy versus lease? What is your commute like?
Some bay area dealers will ship you a car for $800. That should be your last resort.

Can you update your location info via your user name in the upper right > User Control Panel > Profile tab? That way, we don't need to ask in future posts/threads or do sleuthing to deduce it.

What are your daily driving needs in terms of miles? How much city vs. highway? Will you have the ability to charge at your work/destinations?

jimhunt012015 said:

I live in Phoenix. I want to buy Leaf because I can drive on HOV lane and save $200 gas per month.

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You really want to buy? Yeah, sure the 2015 Leaf has the "lizard battery" that is supposedly more heat tolerant, but we never got ANY data from Nissan as to how much that improved vs. that of earlier Leafs. Or, more accurately, we never got any battery degradation data from Nissan on any batteries used in the Leaf.

We do know the the batteries on the '11 and '12 Leaf degraded HORRIBLY in Phoenix, having lost ~30% of their capacity in under 24 months.

jimhunt012015 said:

2. I am looking for buying or leasing and buying at the end of the lease.

Click to expand...

You sure you really want to buy at end of lease? See my saga at http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?p=430552#p430552 and http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?p=430825#p430825.

The residual on my '13 Leaf SV w/both packages was a crazy ~$20601. After the $6500 discount and + the $300 purchase fee, I would've needed to pay $14.4K + tax and license to buy out my lease. Seemed dumb to do that since an a equivalent on the used market would be ~$11K to $11.5K.

I bought a suitable replacement '13 SV w/premium packace only (didn't have QC + LED package since I didn't want to pay for it) w/just under 24K miles for $9,325 + tax.

If a dealer is offering you $28k for a car that TrueCar says has been selling for $31k, I don't see what the problem is.

As far as the $11k lease cash, most of that is comprised of the $7500 Federal rebate that Nissan passes on to lessees; if you buy the car instead, you will have to apply for it come next tax season, and depending on your particular tax circumstances you may not see all of that in the form of a tax refund or reduction. The remainder is manufacturer or even dealer cash thrown in to make the sale happen.

The $5000 cash back likely requires you finance with NMAC, possibly at a higher interest rate than if you didn't go with the cash. However, leasing makes much more sense, but if you do decide to keep the car you can always buy it as you are considering.

I know many folks have bought from Fontana Nissan and had them shipped back home. Note though that if you want to drive the car out of the dealership for some reason, you will need to pay at least the base California sales tax on the vehicle's purchase price (minus the residual if you are leasing) along with first year's reg fees of about $300.