2013/2014 Nissan Leaf Lease Information

[SteveInSeattle]

There is a big flaw in the leasing vs buying discussion: Since I got $8500 in rebates and another 1,000 off MSRP, the $35,000 MSRP sells for $26,500. The residual is 60% of MSRP or $21,000. So I am paying only for $5500 over the 24 months. This is 16% of a Leaf, not 40% of a Leaf. As long as the Federal Government is going to give us $7500 off the economics of Leasing becomes more advantageous. When the Federal credit is used up the equation changes completely. I've now gotten $15,000 subsidy from the government for the 2011 and 2013 Leafs. Plus in Washington state there is no sales tax on EVs, so the payment is 10% less than for an ICE car.

 

[kellymc62]

Hi, I am curious about how you traded in your 11 for a 13. Did you lease the 11? Was it a 2 or 3 year lease? I have a 3 year lease and plan on giving the car back in 16 and getting a new Leaf. I love it so far. I've only had it a month but I hope there will be distance improvement by 16. Kelly

 

[stavtom]

i guess it matters what version of the leaf you are getting...the S after tax breaks in CA is 18800 (plus sales tax)....but if you choose to lease it you are looking at 5500 (as a good deal on the lease over two years) then .60 residual on 28800 which is 17280.....so total cost to buy if if you decide is 22780...or you can buy it for 18800 (the only advantage is the 5500 lease cost will have sales tax included)

But if you talking .60 residual on the SL thats a different story...Although the cost per month goes up as well for the SL leased leaf

 

[pcx999]

This is from Sunnyvale Nissan.

The monthly payment includes all tax etc, and there's a $395 disposition fee as usual.

I picked up a Leaf S with charge package in the bay area.

VPP
24 month
$205/month
0 down
15k miles

thanks to this board!

Ok, this is great news. It would confirm that Tsowens recent S deal is matchable. Can you confirm that this is without any other taxes or other charges, what dealership and when you picked up the car? A lot of people here in NorCal want to know.

 

[will14]

This is from Sunnyvale Nissan.The monthly payment includes all tax etc, and there's a $395 disposition fee as usual.

That's amazing. You saw the offer I got in email from them: $3800 down + $135/month. Can you share how you negotiated the deal? Thanks.

 

[Corina1231]

This is from Sunnyvale Nissan.

The monthly payment includes all tax etc, and there's a $395 disposition fee as usual.

I picked up a Leaf S with charge package in the bay area.

VPP
24 month
$205/month
0 down
15k miles

thanks to this board!

Ok, this is great news. It would confirm that Tsowens recent S deal is matchable. Can you confirm that this is without any other taxes or other charges, what dealership and when you picked up the car? A lot of people here in NorCal want to know.

Sweeeet! You pretty much got the same deal Tsowens ($5200) got a month ago on his VPP S deal at Sunnyvale! In doing so, you got the 2nd best deal ever posted on this forum for a new Leaf S, any year. You've helped all of us in doing so. Congratulations!

$0 down Plus
$24 x $205 = $4920 Plus
$395 Dispo fee

Equals

$5315 total cost of lease.

 

[wantonsoup]

Wontonsoup, congratulations! You had said you would post your deal numbers when you got your lease and I was waiting to see them. Glad to to see you got your car. Did you get the color you wanted?

Yep, got my color and package combination (actually has too much crap on it but life goes on).

2013 SL 24-month lease, 12k miles per year, Colorado

$37,860 MSRP
$35,309 Invoice
$34,310 Cap Cost
$1000 cash down
$232 Monthly Payment (not including sales tax)
$23,400 Residual i.e., I will NOT be buying this car in 24 months! Yowza! But great for a lease

I'm trying to exclude my sales tax from the numbers.

 

[Pushpak]

Got back with my 2013 SL (no options, no VPP or any other discount) from Sunnyvale Nissan. The essentials:

Out the door: $2,000
Monthly (incl tax): $318
Miles: 12k /yr
Disposition fee: $395
Total cost: $13,525

CA rebate: $2,500
Net cost: $11,025
Cents/mile: 30.6

I didn't bust a gut squeezing the last dollar out the deal. Getting via email to a reasonable number, quickly and unambiguously, was paramount. Other than an entirely unnecessary last-minute attempt to insert a disposition fee, the transaction was - in Erica Jong's word - zipless. (After a few Kabuki moves they backed the fee off the price.)

My sincere thanks for the generous contributions from board participants.

 

[wantonsoup]

Monthly (incl tax): $318

What's your sales tax rate?

 

[tallgirl]

Its hard to compare leasing vs buying on such a new technology. If you buy a leaf now and in 5 years they have a battery that goes 300 + miles in new leafs for 18k...who is going to buy your 100 mile range leaf?

Seems like it comes down to how often you want to buy a new car...if you like getting a new car every five years or so...lease it...if you dont mind owning the same car for 10+ years ..buy it.

If "if" were a skiff ...

If you make all your decisions based on "what happens if ..." and they are financially sub-optimal, all you do is waste money on "what if?" Is there likely to be a newer and cheaper battery technology down the road? Sure. Estimate how long that technology will take to commercialize, debug, and ramp up into low-cost (we are talking about money, right?) production. Use that as the time horizon for a TCO calculation. Lithium batteries were commercialized in 1991 -- keep that in mind when estimating when some as-yet-uncommercialized battery is going to be showing up in your new car.

 

[Pushpak]

Monthly (incl tax): $318

What's your sales tax rate?

Base monthly payment: $294.54
Tax: 8.5%
Total monthly payment: $318.49

 

[LEAFfan]

Tallgirl, your $18K estimate for a replacement pack is WAY off. It's been posted elsewhere on this forum to be around $5K with core return. The actual price will be given before the first day of summer.

 

[tallgirl]

There is a big flaw in the leasing vs buying discussion: Since I got $8500 in rebates and another 1,000 off MSRP, the $35,000 MSRP sells for $26,500. The residual is 60% of MSRP or $21,000. So I am paying only for $5500 over the 24 months. This is 16% of a Leaf, not 40% of a Leaf. As long as the Federal Government is going to give us $7500 off the economics of Leasing becomes more advantageous. When the Federal credit is used up the equation changes completely. I've now gotten $15,000 subsidy from the government for the 2011 and 2013 Leafs. Plus in Washington state there is no sales tax on EVs, so the payment is 10% less than for an ICE car.

How do you get the Federal Tax Credit on a lease? You don't ever own the car, unless you purchase it at the end of the lease.

The spreadsheet I found here produced numbers relatively close to what was being quoted at the dealer and it also included a dollar amount which explained whether leasing or purchasing outright was better.

 

[Corina1231]

Got back with my 2013 SL (no options, no VPP or any other discount) from Sunnyvale Nissan. The essentials:

Out the door: $2,000
Monthly (incl tax): $318
Miles: 12k /yr
Disposition fee: $395
Total cost: $13,525

CA rebate: $2,500
Net cost: $11,025
Cents/mile: 30.6

I didn't bust a gut squeezing the last dollar out the deal. Getting via email to a reasonable number, quickly and unambiguously, was paramount. Other than an entirely unnecessary last-minute attempt to insert a disposition fee, the transaction was - in Erica Jong's word - zipless. (After a few Kabuki moves they backed the fee off the price.)

My sincere thanks for the generous contributions from board participants.

Beautiful car! Enjoy driving it in the carpool lane with me and other Bay Area Leaf leasers the next THREE years! I hope you will continue to post. Congratulations!

 

[tallgirl]

Tallgirl, your $18K estimate for a replacement pack is WAY off. It's been posted elsewhere on this forum to be around $5K with core return. The actual price will be given before the first day of summer.

It wasn't an estimate. It's way of showing that even IF the pack were $18K, leasing a new Leaf every two years would be a worse decision that buying one, replacing the battery at 6 years, and owning it for another six years.

Here's a web page I found which explains the two approaches. It's a bit biased towards leasing, and uses the same scare-tactics to promote leases that are common elsewhere, but it's mostly honest --

http://www.leaseguide.com/lease03.htm

Here's a quote --

3. The long-term cost of leasing is ALWAYS MORE than the cost of buying, assuming the buyer keeps his vehicle after loan-end.
If a buyer keeps his car after the loan has been paid off and drives it for many more years, the cost is spread over a longer term. It doesn't take rocket science to figure out that the cost of buying one car and driving it for ten years is less expensive than leasing or buying four or five different cars over the same period. Therefore, leasing is always more expensive than long-term buying. If long-term financial cost savings were the most important objective in acquiring a new car, it would always be best to buy the car and drive it for as long as it survives — or until the cost of maintenance and repairs begins to exceed the cost of replacing it. However, many automotive consumers have other more immediate objectives that are more important than long-term cost savings.

There are legitimate reasons to lease, and some of them have nothing to do with the some kind of "total cost of ownership" equation. But long term, the "cost of leasing is ALWAYS MORE than the cost of buying".

Many years ago I had friends who thought leasing was a great deal, until the lease ended and the reality that they had no trade-in smacked them upside the head.

ANYWAY, enough said. I need to get my sleep.

 

[Corina1231]

Wontonsoup, congratulations! You had said you would post your deal numbers when you got your lease and I was waiting to see them. Glad to to see you got your car. Did you get the color you wanted?

Yep, got my color and package combination (actually has too much crap on it but life goes on).

2013 SL 24-month lease, 12k miles per year, Colorado

$37,860 MSRP
$35,309 Invoice
$34,310 Cap Cost
$1000 cash down
$232 Monthly Payment (not including sales tax)
$23,400 Residual i.e., I will NOT be buying this car in 24 months! Yowza! But great for a lease I am trying to exclude sales taxes.

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

$1000 plus (1st month?)
$232 x 23 or 24 months?
$395 Dispo fee

Help me, wontonsoup, is the first month included in the $1000 down? Also, do you not have tax in Co. or is it rebated back? Looks good either way but I can't get to the bottom line without knowing.

 

[cgaydos]

2013 SL 24-month lease, 12k miles per year, Colorado

$37,860 MSRP
$35,309 Invoice
$34,310 Cap Cost
$1000 cash down
$232 Monthly Payment (not including sales tax)
$23,400 Residual i.e., I will NOT be buying this car in 24 months! Yowza! But great for a lease

I'm trying to exclude my sales tax from the numbers.

So, when you do your 2013 Colorado tax return be sure to claim the credit for this lease. The Colorado tax credit for a LEAF in 2013 is $4812. You get the portion of this credit that matches the portion that you are paying for.

Total cost of car: $37,860
Value when remaining: $23,400
Difference: $14,460 (this is what you are paying for)
Percentage of car that you are paying for: $14,460/$37,860 = 38.2%
Amount of tax credit: 38.2% * $4812 = $1838

That more than covers your down payment.

 

[cgaydos]

Help me, wontonsoup, is the first month included in the $1000 down? Also, do you not have tax in Co. or is it rebated back? Looks good either way but I can't get to the bottom line without knowing.

Colorado does have sales tax. It varies by locality - no matter what dealer you buy from (or even out of state) you pay based on where you live. Just to add to the complication, the rate of Colorado sales tax you pay is different for the initial purchase and the monthly payment. You can be sure that wontonsoup's numbers include the sales tax for his locality - all car dealers know to include this in the lease contracts.

 

[Corina1231]

Help me, wontonsoup, is the first month included in the $1000 down? Also, do you not have tax in Co. or is it rebated back? Looks good either way but I can't get to the bottom line without knowing.

Colorado does have sales tax. It varies by locality - no matter what dealer you buy from (or even out of state) you pay based on where you live. Just to add to the complication, the rate of Colorado sales tax you pay is different for the initial purchase and the monthly payment. You can be sure that wontonsoup's numbers include the sales tax for his locality - all car dealers know to include this in the lease contracts.

Great, thank you very much for that information. We have been keeping running tallies on this forum dating back to last year so it is important to know wontonsoup's total lease cost (after rebate). But note that he stated that he was "excluding the taxes" from his numbers so his taxes are NOT reflected in his numbers. I can't figure out and post accurately what his total cost of lease is without clearing this up.

If he had included everything including tax he would have just paid about $5300 or $5525 rounded off (depending whether the down included the 1st month) to lease an SL for 2 years! Calculate down plus total of payments plus Dispo fee less any state rebate, as we always do, so it's apples to apples. But $2600 a year is the price of an S model, not an SL! Compare that to the $11k Pushpack just got on his 12k, 3 year deal with his $2500 CA rebate considered.

We need to know his taxes and any other charges to know the cost true total cost of his lease for comparison purposes. Not sure why he tried backing them out; he clearly got a nice deal.

Recall that the 1st quote wontonsoup got was over $9000, excluding tax and not taking into account the rebate either, which would have put it in the $8000 range. I suggested at that time he should try to get the deal into the $7200 range including all taxes, rebates, etc. ($3600 yr.). Coincidentally, PushPak's deal ended up at exactly $3700 yr. today on his SL.

That's why I have asked wontonsoup to clarify his new numbers.

 

[bradbissell]

Leased a 2013 SV with limited options (mats, spash guards, stupid hologram kick plates ugh!). I had originally walked out of the dealership last week when they wanted a decision that instant without my talking to the boss. Anyone who is married knows how that would have gone. Anyway, they let me walk which means I probably got the best deal I was going to get. Swallowed my pride and went back on friday to get the original deal.

24months 15k/yr

$1000 down
$259.25/month (base w/no tax) 23months
$395 disposition (tried to get rid of this but they didn't bite)
--------
$7357.75

$0.245 per mile