[Bay Area Leasing] Good deal?

[JoulesThief]

Just FYI, we leased a 2015 SEL (leather, quick charge port) for $238/mo+tax with NOTHING down (the lease incentives covered all taxes, fees, and 1st month payment). That was for 3 years, 10k miles/year. So all in all the 3 year lease costs ($238+$22 tax) times 35 months = $9100. I will also get the CA CVRP $2500 rebate in a few weeks, so actually its $9100 - $2500 = $6600 after all is said and done, including all taxes and fees.

where did you get this from?

i just stopped by VW Sunnyvale and the deal they offered was 7188 down with 159/mo on a SEL. doesnt seem like the greatest deal based on what others on here are getting.

Keep in mind it was a 2015 SEL, not a 2016. I leased from Hilltop VW in Richmond, CA on Dec 31. They had 3 2015 SEL's in inventory when I leased mine, yet they only showed 1 in stock at the time.

I still think it was a fairly good deal considering I've just made my first actual payment of $260, which is the only money I've spent out of pocket so far since I leased it. And right now, I can log into my account see that the payoff for the car is $20,234. If I get my $2,500 from the CA rebate, that brings it to $260 + $20,234 - $2,500 for a grand total out of pocket of $17,994. Not too bad considering I didn't have to haggle or anything with the dealership. If there are any more of the 2015's left, I'm sure even better deals are available.

While that may be the pay off on your car, don't you also owe sales tax on the payoff balance too?

 

[mhathawa]

Well, I don't think I actually paid a premium for mine. It was actually cheaper than the 2016 SE deals I was seeing around here at the time. With that said however, I would never lease a base SE because of the slow level 2 charging capability. Same reason I would never lease a Volt or Spark EV. They can only charge at a max of 3.3 (or is it 3.6?) kw. I am the EV advocate at my workplace and I have a 70 mile round trip commute. I'm the reason we even have a charger at work, one that I personally picked out and had installed. I had to spend 2 years driving that shitty commute with no chargers between my home and work. I had a dual 6.6kw Clipper Creek level 2 unit installed, and since then other co-workers have gone out and leased EV's.

It really irks me that their cars cannot charge at the full rate of the EVSE that I picked out, and they spend twice the amount of time to charge as I do. It makes a difference when I'm the one that has to manage who charges when and how long. Its not like we can just add more chargers to our parking lot. If I'd had my way we would have installed 15 or 20 110volt outlets to let people trickle charge all day long without having to move their cars. Instead, two spots was all I was allowed to work with, so I wanted to maximize the kw rate of charge. But that gets totally defeated by the piece of crap on-board chargers in the Spark EV, Volt, base Leaf, base E-golf, etc.

So for me, it was really down to (1) price, (2) on-board charging capability, and (3) range. I think the deal I got on my 2015 SEL was the best I could do given I had to satisfy those three categories. My other choices were a used RAV4 EV or a Kia Soul EV. I'd already had a RAV4 EV till it was wrecked, so I knew its pros and cons very well. Both would have definitely fared better in the range category and matched the e-golf's on-board charging capability (rav4 ev has slightly higher rate of charge), but they both exceeded the price. I couldn't justify spending $25k on the RAV4 EV with 10k+ miles or spending close to $30k on a new Soul EV. Not when the E-golf was so cheap. So far, I'm pleasantly surprised by the range in the E-golf. Its much better than the Fit EV has even been for me on my mostly highway commute.

 

[mhathawa]

While that may be the pay off on your car, don't you also owe sales tax on the payoff balance too?

Sure, if you buy out the lease, there's always sale tax due to DMV, right? But the sales tax on all the incentives and cap cost reduction was already built into my monthly payment.

 

[JoulesThief]

Well, I don't think I actually paid a premium for mine. It was actually cheaper than the 2016 SE deals I was seeing around here at the time. With that said however, I would never lease a base SE because of the slow level 2 charging capability. Same reason I would never lease a Volt or Spark EV. They can only charge at a max of 3.3 (or is it 3.6?) kw. I am the EV advocate at my workplace and I have a 70 mile round trip commute. I'm the reason we even have a charger at work, one that I personally picked out and had installed. I had to spend 2 years driving that shitty commute with no chargers between my home and work. I had a dual 6.6kw Clipper Creek level 2 unit installed, and since then other co-workers have gone out and leased EV's.

It really irks me that their cars cannot charge at the full rate of the EVSE that I picked out, and they spend twice the amount of time to charge as I do. It makes a difference when I'm the one that has to manage who charges when and how long. Its not like we can just add more chargers to our parking lot. If I'd had my way we would have installed 15 or 20 110volt outlets to let people trickle charge all day long without having to move their cars. Instead, two spots was all I was allowed to work with, so I wanted to maximize the kw rate of charge. But that gets totally defeated by the piece of crap on-board chargers in the Spark EV, Volt, base Leaf, base E-golf, etc.

So for me, it was really down to (1) price, (2) on-board charging capability, and (3) range. I think the deal I got on my 2015 SEL was the best I could do given I had to satisfy those three categories. My other choices were a used RAV4 EV or a Kia Soul EV. I'd already had a RAV4 EV till it was wrecked, so I knew its pros and cons very well. Both would have definitely fared better in the range category and matched the e-golf's on-board charging capability (rav4 ev has slightly higher rate of charge), but they both exceeded the price. I couldn't justify spending $25k on the RAV4 EV with 10k+ miles or spending close to $30k on a new Soul EV. Not when the E-golf was so cheap. So far, I'm pleasantly surprised by the range in the E-golf. Its much better than the Fit EV has even been for me on my mostly highway commute.

It's rather funny how the Volt people get hammered on for ICE'ing at public charging stations that are free, because they do charge so damn slow, and they do think it's a parking spot, not a charging station. Their attitude is that it's a plug in car, and they claim it's a "right" to plug in. It's not a right, it's a privilege. It's a refueling station, not a parking spot. I found this out the hard way in the first month of ownership, while waiting for the contractor to pull a permit and fit me in with having a NEMA 14-50 outlet installed in the garage for a 30 amp 240 V 7.2 kwh EVSE unit, I was dependent on public charging. Drove me crazy, a Volt on the public units for 4 hours to get, what, 35 to 40 miles range, where as if I got on a public unit at 208V and 30 amps, realisitically, an hour, with the way I drive, would add 33 miles on the Guess-o-meter, two hours would add 66 miles. Perhaps I drive a bit nicer than most folks with EV's getting free electricity do. Free electricity creates freeloaders. When the electricity is free, and you aren't paying for it, the same thing happens on the Tesla boards at the Superchargers. The drivers go 80 to 85 miles an hour, they aren't paying for the electricity from supercharger to supercharger, Elon Musk is. The Tesla range drops dramatically driving that fast.