I've been wavering on the buy/no buy decision for a new Leaf. As mentioned in posts above, I've mainly been hoping the 2017 new prices might nose dive as we get closer to the release of the 2018 model. I live in the SF Bay Area - in Cupertino. So I don't have access to that 10k Energy Company discount that's available in some locales. It's hard for me to lease - my round trip commute is 66 miles a day (so I'd blow through for example a 15k per year lease cap).
At this point what I'm trying to figure out is whether I could snag a rock bottomish deal for a new 2017 leaf or whether I should just wait for the 2018. I guess my definition of rock bottom would be if I could buy a 2017 S with the Quick Charge package for say $24k cash, then I could apply the $7500 federal tax rebate to that, taking the effective price down to say $16,500. If I could go even lower of course that would be better. By contrast if I waited for the 2018 - I guess those are supposed to be in the $29 k range or something when they come out for the S?
I've been monitoring the inventories of Nissan Leafs at some of the local dealers here in the San Francisco Bay Area where I live. Some of the dealers have very small inventories so I won't bother to list them here. The two largest inventories for dealers near me are Sunnyvale Nissan and Burlingame Nissan. Here's what the inventories looked like for those over the past few days. This shows the period between Sat 8/16/2017 - Mon 9/25/2017 first by raw numbers of new leafs, and then broken down by S/SL/SV trims. These are almost all 2017 new Leafs - there are a few 2016 new leafs mixed in there:
Sunnyvale: 70,67,66,66,66,66,58,58,57
53/8/9=70, 50/8/9=67, 50/8/8=66, 50/8/8=66, 50/8/8=66, 50/8/8=66, 50/8/8=66, 43/8/7=58, 43/8/7=58, 42/8/7=57
Burlingame: 50,50,49,49,49,49,49,48,48,47
41/8/1=50, 41/8/1=50, 40/8/1=49, 40/8/1=49, 40/8/1=49, 40/8/1=49, 40/8/1=49, 40/7/1=48, 40/7/1=48, 39/7/1=47
So the inventories have been steadily declining (people are buying/leasing these 2017's I guess)
What I'm wondering is whether I should just approach these dealers and shoot for $24 k cash (or whether they'd just say no to that). Or lower. Not sure what's possible here in the end game stage before the 2017s get phased out the the 2018s show up.