So I Went to the Dealership Yesterday...

[Deleted member 19703]

The wife and I are shopping for a new Leaf, so we stopped by the Nissan dealership nearest our house in The OC. The first salesman we spoke with knew absolutely nothing about the Leaf, so he turned us over to another salesman who he described as the "Leaf Expert." This young man was also very nice, but his knowledge of the Leaf wasn't much better than the first guy's (example: he told us the big metal box under the hood was the battery). This was also his second day working at the dealership, which may have had something to do with it. Anyway nice guy, but I walked away with the feeling that I knew more about the Leaf than he did, and I've been researching them for less than a week.

Anyway we got to drive a few laps around the auto center and then we sat down to talk about numbers for a bit. As usually happens in car stealerships, we got turned over again to a Sales Manager, who offered us a $279/36 month lease deal on the SV we had been looking at, and mentioned a $13,000(!!!) rebate from Nissan on the 2016 Leafs. We had to leave for another appointment so I was not able to press for details, but later when I went to Nissan's web site I could find no mention of any sort of rebate.

So I'm hoping that you knowledgeable folks can give me the straight scoop. My initial idea was to either lease a new Leaf or buy a used one, but a $13,000 rebate on top of the $7500 tax credit is pretty tempting, making a new Leaf cost only a few thousand more than a used one. Is this rebate for real? Is it documented anywhere? Or are these guys just trying to bamboozle us?

 

[rosier9]

$13k isn't an unreasonable discount, there's a group buy in Aurora, CO that has some amazing (very similar) discounts currently. It would be pretty hard to bamboozle you if the bottom line number didn't reflect the $13k in discounts. If you're in the market anyways that would be a great price.

 

[pyrotech]

I'm not up on the current rebates. However, you will not get the tax credit if you lease. It goes to the Lessor. That's why they can make the rebates so large.

 

[Firetruck41]

$13k rebate might be for S trim, which has smaller battery and less features...

 

[DNAinaGoodWay]

The deals will only improve once the Bolt is out.

 

[RockyNv]

The best deal around here is to take the lease and get all the rebates and tax incentives up front on the lease and then pay off in 6 months. If you finance or pay cash you usually loose some rebates and take a chance on how much of the tax incentives you may actually qualify for at the end of the year. I priced it both ways and the lease with the payoff was usually a few thousand dollars less at the final payoff than financing or paying cash out the door.

 

[rcm4453]

Sounds to me like the $13k off is already factored in which brought your lease payment down to $279/month. That $13k probably includes the $7,500 tax credit. I highly doubt your getting $279/month lease payments plus an additional $13k in rebates. That would be too good to be true!

 

[Deleted member 19703]

I guess I'll never know what their offer really was. Both the salesman and the manager promised to call us back the following day (i.e. yesterday) but neither bothered to actually do so. :roll:

So our search continues - at another dealership.

I guess the experience of buying an electric car is really no different than buying a ICE car.

 

[jkline]

If you are not in a hurry, to echo the above, I wouldn't consider buying a new Leaf until the Bolt comes out. If the car lives up to all of its promises, demand for the Leaf will fall, and so will prices.

 

[cdherman]

If you are not in a hurry, to echo the above, I wouldn't consider buying a new Leaf until the Bolt comes out. If the car lives up to all of its promises, demand for the Leaf will fall, and so will prices.

It really depends on your needs and time frame. The Bolt will be starting at $37000 before federal tax incentive. So around $29,500 after fed tax incentive. But remember, your state will probably tax you on the full $37000. Plug your state tax in on $7500. You will pay that much more too, but this applies to Leaf/Bolt/S/X etc.....

The current SV (yes, you can buy it NOW) not vapor ware 30kw battery Leaf, with a legitimate 100 miles plus range, can be had for around $26k financed. You can pay off that financing whenever you desire. So the same price applies to cash. That is after whatever dealer discounts you can negotiate and after the 6k incentive. IF you are financially able to take advantage of the federal rebate, that about $18.5k. So around $11K less than the Bolt.

Do you need a 200+ mile car? Depends on the role of the car. I have a 2012 Leaf with a degraded (but not cooked) battery. I have a new 2016 30kwh. The 2016 will suffice for me for a long long time, even with spread out distances in Kansas City. But I have a backup AWD vehicle that we drive in bad weather and for longer distances.

Even the Bolt and Teslas do NOT give me the range that much of the USA needs. A fast charge from Tesla is nice thing, but the route I would have to follow to visit my rural family would make the trip 60 min longer. I am a dead serious early adopter -- but for $90,000 I am also a rich impatient man.......

I really think the new 30kwh Leafs are worth considering. You can have one NOW. You can have one for at least $10,000 less than you will ever get a Bolt or Tesla 3. And I am not so sure that the Bolt or Tesla 3 are sufficient to be a "single vehicle solution" for many drivers. You cannot drive them across the country..... If you buy into the "I'll rent once in a while for long trips" idea, then the Leaf gives you a lot of rentals!

 

[rcm4453]

If you are not in a hurry, to echo the above, I wouldn't consider buying a new Leaf until the Bolt comes out. If the car lives up to all of its promises, demand for the Leaf will fall, and so will prices.

It really depends on your needs and time frame. The Bolt will be starting at $37000 before federal tax incentive. So around $29,500 after fed tax incentive. But remember, your state will probably tax you on the full $37000. Plug your state tax in on $7500. You will pay that much more too, but this applies to Leaf/Bolt/S/X etc.....

The current SV (yes, you can buy it NOW) not vapor ware 30kw battery Leaf, with a legitimate 100 miles plus range, can be had for around $26k financed. You can pay off that financing whenever you desire. So the same price applies to cash. That is after whatever dealer discounts you can negotiate and after the 6k incentive. IF you are financially able to take advantage of the federal rebate, that about $18.5k. So around $11K less than the Bolt.

Do you need a 200+ mile car? Depends on the role of the car. I have a 2012 Leaf with a degraded (but not cooked) battery. I have a new 2016 30kwh. The 2016 will suffice for me for a long long time, even with spread out distances in Kansas City. But I have a backup AWD vehicle that we drive in bad weather and for longer distances.

Even the Bolt and Teslas do NOT give me the range that much of the USA needs. A fast charge from Tesla is nice thing, but the route I would have to follow to visit my rural family would make the trip 60 min longer. I am a dead serious early adopter -- but for $90,000 I am also a rich impatient man.......

I really think the new 30kwh Leafs are worth considering. You can have one NOW. You can have one for at least $10,000 less than you will ever get a Bolt or Tesla 3. And I am not so sure that the Bolt or Tesla 3 are sufficient to be a "single vehicle solution" for many drivers. You cannot drive them across the country..... If you buy into the "I'll rent once in a while for long trips" idea, then the Leaf gives you a lot of rentals!

Well said, plus I don't think the Bolt EV will be available nationwide at first, only in select rollout states. Not only that they're not producing all that many for 2017 so getting your hands on one probably won't be easy.

 

[cwerdna]

<span>If you are not in a hurry, to echo the above, I wouldn't consider buying a new Leaf until the<a href="http://www.mychevybolt.com/forum" class="interlinkr" target="_blank"> Bolt <span class="tip">Visit the Chevy Bolt EV</span></a>comes out. If the car lives up to all of its promises, demand for the Leaf will fall, and so will prices.</span>

Agreed.

Sounds to me like the $13k off is already factored in which brought your lease payment down to $279/month. That $13k probably includes the $7,500 tax credit. I highly doubt your getting $279/month lease payments plus an additional $13k in rebates. That would be too good to be true!

Yeah. ChooseNissan.com is the official place to look for publicly advertised incentives. At http://www.choosenissan.com/los-angeles-area/?tool=cn.dsp.alloffers.zipcode_search.dsp_alloffers, I currently see 0% financing WITH $4K NMAC cash.

I picked a random OC zip code of 92799 and (oddly) don't see any Leaf incentives currently at http://www.cars.com/go/advice/incentives/incentivesAll.jsp?zc=92799 and http://www.edmunds.com/nissan/car-incentives.html?zip=92799. You may want to put in your zip and check those pages periodically.

Now, that I think about, if they also factored in the $2500 CVRP... that's how they could claim numbers like that. $7500 + $4000 + $2500 = $14K. Or, maybe they excluded $2500 CVRP and are including some "dealer discount" off of MSRP?

 

[Oliverovan]

I shopped around the internet sales folks at front range CO dealerships. I had to replace the 2012 SV that was at the end of our lease. I wanted the bigger 30kW battery at around a similar price. I was paying 204/mo. I wanted a lease. Eventually I took a 220/mo lease on a 2016 SV and paid less than half the down payment I did 4 years ago. In CO I can claim a larger state tax credit since it's calculated based on the battery size. So far I'm VERY happy. I like the look, feel, acceleration and handling better. My wife can jack up the drivers seat to see clearly and I really use that backup camera. I'm only in my first week but I've been getting 4.9 miles/kWh so my range is stellar. I'm only trickle charging at this time but I'm looking into getting a 220v outlet in my garage.

There's no way I'd pay 40k to get a 200 mile EV. Why?