Veganlady said:
Hello all,
I'm in the very beginning stages of shopping for a LEAF and designing a spreadsheet to compare deals. I'm in the Los Angeles metro area and I qualify for VPP at level D, which means $500 over dealer invoice. I'm curious to know what I need to consider to compare apples to apples between dealers. Is it sufficient to just make sure I'm getting all of the tax incentives, calculate total out of pocket (down = payment x term) and divide by total miles to get cost per mile and compare on that basis? Is it really worth it to get into money factors and residuals?
Also, what would be a good cost per mile for my area? Preliminary phone calls have yielded about $0.27 per mile for 36 months/12,000 miles per year. Should I press harder?
Thanks for any insight you can offer!
Money factor and residuals do affect how much you pay, but what you really need to focus on is TCO (Total Cost of Ownership). Specifically, how much do you have to put down and how much do you have to pay every month, all added up. It looks like you've already done that with the 27 cents/mile calculation.
Also, look into 24 month leases. Even though they don't qualify for the rebate, many folks have gotten superior lease deals with 24 month leases rather than 36 month ones,
even with the CVRP rebate factored in. If you do go with the 36 month lease, note that unlike with the Federal tax credit, the CVRP rebate is NOT factored into the payments...it comes in the form of a separate check, made out to you.
As far as the 27 cents/mile, you can probably do better, though without knowing the specific model it's hard to say just how much better.