Free to charge at work..Time to lease an e-Golf?

Hey e-Golfers,

I've been lucky enough to find myself in a situation where I can charge an EV for free at work. I currently drive an older Toyota truck and plan on keeping that vehicle for road trips. Honestly, I'm tired of buying gas for environmental/political reasons.

Does it make financial sense to lease a vehicle based on the premise that I can charge it for free at work? Maybe I'm just looking for some hand holding going into a lease. Never leased a vehicle before, and I'm not sure that I'm quite comfortable with that money being "lost" at the end of the lease.

I'm also not sure with purchasing an e-golf since I'm not sure how the batteries will hold up after time. Ive heard of Leafs losing over 10% of their original range after the first year.

Thanks for your input.

To me, free charging at work is just icing on the cake. The car drives really well and is worth it even if you charge at home like I do. If you just want to look at the economics, think about how much you spend to fuel your truck for your commute. Subtract that from your monthly payment on the e-Golf. Call your insurance agent and find out how much it will cost to add the e-Golf to your policy.

Regarding lease vs. buy - the effective interest rate on these leases is nearly zero, so that is not a consideration. The tax credit is already rolled into the lease and if you live in California, you get the $2,500 state rebate, so if you put that much cash up-front you can reduce the monthly payments. Or, you can just put nothing down and pay nothing for about 10 months with the rebate money. Your call on that really. Anyway, if you want to keep the car after the lease term you can buy it for the residual value established in the lease - no more negotiating on that, just some fees to get the title, etc. I don't really see the downside of leasing unless you know for sure you that you will put a lot of miles on it.

If you're afraid of having no car at the end of the lease, and you have a relatively short (under 50 miles round trip) commute, you can always go with a used Leaf. My 2012 SV with just barely 25k miles and all 12 bars (though will probably lose the 12th one by the fall) is worth less than $10k. However Nissan is also offering some significant incentives, and depending on location you can get as much as $10k off EXCLUDING any government incentives.

The 2015 Leafs are supposed to have a more heat-tolerant battery than older versions.

Also don't rely on work as a primary charging source, unless you own the business, or there are dedicated EV charging stations. Many folks have done that only to find out that problems arose (blowing circuit breakers) or jealous co-workers complained to management who then ordered the practice be stopped. Even at workplaces with EV charging stations there is often competition for them, and co-workers having to play "musical parking spaces" during the lunch break.

I currently change all of the time at work. It was one of the main reasons I bought the car. However, even if free charging at work were to end today, I would still be happy I leased my e-golf. When you look at the electricity costs per mile of driving, it is still SIGNIFICANTLY lower than the price per mile of gas. Also I can charge at home on 110 and don't need to buy or install an expensive level 2 charger.

My one suggestion is to only get an e-golf (or really any electric) if your commute is short enough (less than half the total range), so that you can comfortably get to work and back home on one charge. That way you don't actually require a charge at work to get home! If you did and they suddenly took it away or started charging a lot for it, you'd have issues.

As for leasing, none of us know what value the e-golf will have in 3+ years... but I was betting on it having less value than the residual price baked into the lease. I think there will be significant battery/range improvements in electric vehicles over the next few years which will make the desire for current models quite a bit less. I may be wrong, but even if I am, a lease still isn't usually a horrible deal (considering that all cars depreciate).

Thank you all for your input.

My commute round trip is roughly 20 miles, so it would not be an issue to get back and forth on one charge.

The e-Golf is really the only EV(besides Model S) that I'm actually attracted to. A relative let me test drive his Volt, and while I was impressed with the handling and many features, I wasn't attracted to anything about the car. I wouldn't even consider the LEAF now that the e-Golf is in the market.

I filled my ICE with gas today and it almost made me sick to think I just gave $50 to Chevron.

emile said:

Thank you all for your input.

My commute round trip is roughly 20 miles, so it would not be an issue to get back and forth on one charge.

The e-Golf is really the only EV(besides Model S) that I'm actually attracted to. A relative let me test drive his Volt, and while I was impressed with the handling and many features, I wasn't attracted to anything about the car. I wouldn't even consider the LEAF now that the e-Golf is in the market.

I filled my ICE with gas today and it almost made me sick to think I just gave $50 to Chevron.

Click to expand...

Ya, it sounds like you're ready! I completely agree... the golf was actually the first electric car (that I could afford) that I thought looked nice AND was electric! Word of warning: you'll get a great deal if you buy a 2015 right now... but I very much wish I would have waited for the 2016. CarPlay support (and support for Android's car integration system too... whatever it is called) would have been a huge plus for me considering how absolutely horrible the 2015's infotainment system is.

emile said:

Thank you all for your input.

My commute round trip is roughly 20 miles, so it would not be an issue to get back and forth on one charge.

The e-Golf is really the only EV(besides Model S) that I'm actually attracted to. A relative let me test drive his Volt, and while I was impressed with the handling and many features, I wasn't attracted to anything about the car. I wouldn't even consider the LEAF now that the e-Golf is in the market.

I filled my ICE with gas today and it almost made me sick to think I just gave $50 to Chevron.

Click to expand...

With such a short commute, any EV would work well for you. Now the only thing is get a leftover 2015 at a good price, or wait for the 2016 with more improvements but possibly not as good a lease deal?

You don't state your location, but I presume you're in one of the states where VW sells the eGolf? Unlike the Leaf it's not available everywhere in the US.

No dealer is beating my deal. I have FIVE e-golfs left and I have the carpool lane stickers for
very egolf at the store.




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Hi Emile,

I'm in a similar boat: free charging at work, 15 miles +/- commute, aging car with mounting repair bills. I've started thinking about replacing our 2005 Mercury Sable (175K miles) with a small commuter car, as we already have a newer family sedan.

Following several home and car repairs, we have little in the way of a down payment and didn't think we could afford an EV, but the lease options piqued our interest. For us it's all about cash flow. We keep shelling out for our current car, even though it's "paid of"f and there are diminishing returns. While i love the technology/enviro. benefits of EVs, it was important to me that the eGolf had a "business case" behind it. I recognize the "but you don't havea car in 3 years" argument. I'm not too concerned with that. As i mentioned before, i'm trying to solve a cash flow issue, not increase our net worth.

Below you'll find my assessment of our options. Feel free to pick apart my numbers. I'm new to leasing so i'm sure there are costs i haven't factored in. Even so, there is still substantial room for movement between the eGolf and our other options. That said, the maintenance costs listed on the Honda seem high, comparatively.

I'd be interested in hearing from folks who have leased a eGolf on what their maintenance/repair costs look like. I'm not sure how much is covered by manufacturer's warranties vs. what lessees has to pay for. Either way, this was helpful for me so i thought i'd share it. One thing to note, as has been mentioned elsewhere, insurance company matters. We got a quote from Geico that blew the EV costs out of the water. We plan on making the switch to our new company in another couple of weeks once we have better clarity on a purchase date for the eGolf. Hoping the prices drop further in September.




Additionally, you could factor in the social cost of CO2, which is currently (underestimated) at $37/ton (in 2013 $).

Best,

Aspiring EV Lessee
2005 Mercury Sable
2013 Ford Fusion
1987 Schwinn Voyageur 2.0

In the 3 year lease, the first inspection service at 10,000 miles is included. You will have to pay for the next two at probably $200+ each. If you divide that out into 36 months, then it's about $12/mo. I have not looked into the actual maintenance schedule in the manual. This is based on discussion about the pre-paid maintenance plan on this forum.

From your $5/mo fuel cost it appears that you are estimating 86% of your charging is free. I base that on 1,000 mi/mo, 4mi/kWh driving efficiency, 85% charging efficiency = 294kWh/mo from the wall. $0.12/kWh electricity price give $35.28/mo. $5 is 14% of $35.28. Whether this is a good guess or not depends on how much you drive it on the weekend and how well you can minimize your charging at home to just barely make it to work on Monday morning to eat up as much free juice as you can. Remember, 5 of 7 days is only 71.4%.

Does your monthly payment include all local taxes and incentives? Also, as the release of the 2016 e-Golf approaches, there are going to have to be clearance sales on the 2015 because nobody in their right mind would choose the 2015 at the same price when they are sitting next to each other. Now that I said that, there is one more gotcha on the 2016 - the SE, the new low model replacing the LE, will not have 7.4kW charging or CCS Fast Charge included. It will only have 3.6kW charging. This slow charging makes it super painful to ever go anywhere beyond the single charge range of the car. However, it can fully charge the car from completely empty in a full 8 hour workday or overnight. The "DC Fast Charging Package" that adds back the 7.4kW charging and CCS inlet to the SE has "late availability" according to VW. That would be the only attraction of the 2015 LE vs 2016 SE if they were both available at the same time. The price and available date of the charging package has not been released yet.

Great insights miimura,

I didn't exactly know how to capture the potential utility costs from charging so gave it a guess. We also have free public chargers in my town (about 5 miles from my house), so we could do some no-cost weekend charging if need be. I completely missed the 85% charging efficiency in my calculation. My monthly payment incorporates the various incentives available. I don't believe there should be too much in additional taxes beyond the CT property tax, but i'm not 100% sure on that.

As i said, i knew i'd be missing some costs as i'm new to leasing and EVs. So doubling my charging cost to $10/month and incorporating $12/month for maintenance, my adjusted monthly outlay would be about $366. I'm still cash flow positive from both my baseline and the Honda Fit (or equivalent) alternative, plus it's a newer car and going to be more fun to drive (yay, un-quantifiables!).

The LE vs. SE is a curve ball. I noticed that charger difference and "late availability" comment in the press release from the other topic thread. We can't wait too much longer, both psychologically and our Sable is bound to break sooner rather than later (bad breaks, bad noises and bad smell).

All of the current pricing and promotions reset in September, which is when they expect to get the MY2016s in. I've contacted a local dealer and asked him for fresh September costs ASAP for "drive off" and "monthly payment including taxes" (thanks johnqh) for 2015 LE; 2015 SEL (maybe it'll drop into my price range??) and the 2016 SE w/ Charging Package. Hopefully i'll hear from him next week and from there i'll shop around and play one dealer against the other to find the best value i can. It's tough though, i like my local dealer, he's really nice, but i also don't want to pay more than i have to.

miimura said:

In the 3 year lease, the first inspection service at 10,000 miles is included. You will have to pay for the next two at probably $200+ each.

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Why would you do the 3rd service at all? Return the car and let them deal with the 3rd service.

Following up on the topic of free charging at work, i noticed my work's Clipper Creek charging stations have an input/output of 120V/30A. See pic below:



The eGolf advertises a charge time of 4 hours on 240V chargers. How long would it take to charge on the chargers at my work? Are they really just the equivalent of a trickle charge?

Given this realization, and my goal of paying as little as possible for charging, does the fact that the new SE only has a 3.6 KW onboard charger even matter? I'm getting pricing from local dealers for a 2015 LE, a 2015 SEL and a 2016 SE. But I was thinking i'd need the charging package on the SE to utilize the charging stations at work. Given there is only 1 CCS DCQC station in the area, and it's not on my way to anywhere, the QC piece of the charging package was of little interest.

I'm going to investigate the other charging stations around town to see if they are 240V or just the 120V.

Thanks!

Aspiring EV Lesee

That is a 240 volt EVSE. The input says 208-240 VAC. The 120 V input is measured from each hot leg to ground. The potential between the two hot legs will be 208-240 V.

You can charge at 6 kW with that EVSE, so a complete charge will take four hours. That is if your battery is near empty, though. So in my opinion you don't want the smaller onboard charger. Why wait longer to charge?

I second the advice of getting the 7.2kw onboard charger. It makes charging for free out and about practical. You don't want to be that EV guy that parks somewhere for six hours, and generally only the first couple hours are free to charge, after that it costs just as much as at home. (At least in the Bay Area.)

Go for a 2015 SEL Premium. Buy for $29,500 or get a lease on an even lower cost basis.

HabemusQuattro said:

That is a 240 volt EVSE.

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Yeah here's the product info page from the Clipper Creek website: http://www.clippercreek.com/store/product/charging-station-cs-40-public-infrastructure/

Clipper Creek recently upped the output of its EVSEs that end in -40 from 30 amps to 32 amps, to maximize the amount of current that it can safely draw from the 40 amp circuit.