adric22
Well-known member
I have 5 months left on my 2011 Leaf. There are so many options, but all have pros and cons. I've been debating this in my head for 2 months already and can't decide. Just FYI we current have a 2012 Volt and 2011 Leaf. My Leaf SL has no DC fast charge port, but is otherwise in perfect condition and battery capacity has just recently lost its first bar. It has 30,000 miles and should have right around 36,000 at end of lease in 5 months. My current car payment is $411 (this was one of the first Leafs sold, lease deals were not so good back then.) Ideally, I'd like to lower my monthly payments.
Here are some of the scenarios being considered
Any suggestions or options I hadn't considered?
Here are some of the scenarios being considered
- buy out the lease with a 5 year car loan. My residual is $14,995. So that should drop my monthly payments to somewhere in the $270 range. A nice boost to the monthly budget. Live with the shrinking range, which isn't much of an issue with my 12 mile daily commute. Once some equity is built, I could use it for a trade in on something better in a few years.
- Return the Leaf and lease a new Leaf. This would likely require a down payment which I may not have available. But it would still likely reduce my monthly payment, plus I'd get more cargo area, DC fast charge port, and 6.6Kw charging, and a brand new battery. All good things. But I still wouldn't be building an equity in the car.
- Return the Leaf and lease a second Volt. We love the one we have now, but my wife drives it most of the time. This would also probably require a down payment that I don't have.
- Return the Leaf and lease a C-Max Energi. My wife likes the Cmax and she'd drive it, and I would take over driving the Volt. A win for me, but she'd be burning a lot more gas and the car payment wouldn't be any cheaper than a Volt.
- Return the Leaf and lease a BMW i3 Rex. This would be a great solution, but I am not sure I could afford the payments on an i3, nor the down payment required.
- Return the Leaf and attempt to purchase a used Volt. A used one just might be cheap enough I could afford the payments on it without leasing. This would be a good choice as it would build some equity and eventually get paid off. But truth be, I'd really like a 2013 or newer Volt due to the higher range and some other features, but all of the good deals to be found are on 2011 and 2012 Volts. Unfortunately, even a used Volt would likely result in a car payment higher than the one I have now.
- I likely won't have a down payment. What money I had saved up has been eaten up by some recent unexpected medical bills. When we leased the Leaf and Volt we traded in other cars that had equity so we had a little bit of down payment the first go around. But since these are both lease cars, there will be no equity or trade-in. Lesson learned.
- The only used plug-in vehicles on the market are going to be Volts and Leafs. Obviously if I wanted a used Leaf I might as well keep my own as I have babied it and it is in perfect shape. I don't foresee any good deals on used Cmax Energi or BMW i3 anytime soon.
- I can't figure out the tax situation on my Lease. In Texas I understand you don't have to pay tax when buying out the Lease, assuming all of the tax was paid originally. But when I look at my lease agreement I see that I only paid around $800 in tax. That isn't enough to cover a $34,000 car, but I also had a trade-in that was around $13,000 that would lower the taxes. But I'm still not sure if I'll have to add taxes to my current Leaf if I decide to purchase it.
Any suggestions or options I hadn't considered?