Are Electric Cars Good to Lease?

If you care about saving the environment and saving some money on gas, you might have considered obtaining an electric car. Electronic vehicles – or EVs – are a tempting option these days as switching to electric vehicles is a viable and more efficient alternative. However, according to Bloomberg, more than three-quarters of all EVs are leased instead of being outright bought. Compare this to the overall car sales, where the relationship is the opposite, with roughly 27 percent of cars being leased, and you will see that there must be a good reason why people are choosing to lease their EVs.

There are many reasons why electric cars are good to lease. This article will list some of the main advantages you gain if you opt for this approach so feel free to read more.

Stay up to date with tech improvements

Compared to standard cars, EVs are evolving much faster and at a more significant pace.

For instance, when it debuted, Nissan Leaf had a battery that had an estimated range of 73 miles. However, today many models such as the 2021 Chevrolet Bolt and Hyundai Kona EV can go up to 250 miles on a single battery charge.

Even the Nissan Leaf mentioned above has undergone some significant upgrades – not only has its mileage and charging time improved, but it also comes with the ProPilot Assist feature, which offers semi-autonomous driving features.

When you decide to lease a car, you will get the best and the latest model every couple of years. Once your lease is up, it is easy to swap your vehicle for a new and improved model simply. And there is no place that these upgrades are more noteworthy than in the world of electronic cars.

Avoid severe deprecation

Deprecation is the inherent loss of value that hits everything the moment you buy it. However, it is not the same for everything. For example, most estimates say that a regular car loses twenty percent of its value once it leaves the dealer’s lot.

According to some sources, the situation is even harder for any electric car that is not a Tesla – after one year, most of the EVs are worth less than half of their original price.

Once again, by leasing an EV, you can avoid this issue. Car dealers offer lower interest rates on electric cars or raise their residual value (how much a car is with once the lease is over) to counterbalance this problem.

One more curious advantage to this issue is that if you choose to buy a used electric car, it will be much cheaper than its standard counterpart.

Don’t worry about battery degradation

Lithium-ion batteries power electronic cars. In essence, these batteries are not that much different than the battery that is in your phone.

This means that the same issues that plague your phone battery can harm the car’s battery as well – it might lose its ability to hold a full charge or lose power faster than it should, and so on. Since this is still a relatively new technology, we do not know its advantages and disadvantages. At the moment, things are not so great as GM warns that the Chevy Bolt EV can lose up to forty percent of its battery power during its warranty period of eight years or one hundred thousand miles.

However, one thing holds once more – if you lease an electronic vehicle, this is no longer your problem. As most leases last up to three years, you won’t feel any battery degradation long-term ill effects.

Incentives and bonuses aplenty

When it comes to electric cars, the competition is even more severe than with the regular ones.

Because of that, carmakers will offer different incentives and bonuses to urge you to stay loyal to their brand. So as the end of your lease comes up, you will be the one with the upper hand in negotiations. You can switch to a competitor or stay loyal to your current maker and get rewarded for your loyalty.

Also, no matter where you live, some programs are set up either by your local government or state-wise that offer different incentives to those who drive eco-friendly cars. For example, some places, such as the state of California, offer a cash rebate as high as two thousand dollars.

Sometimes it is the carmakers themselves that offer leasing specials on electric vehicles. For instance, Hyundai recently offered a 12000 dollars cash rebate to those who lease 2021 Kona EV.

Look into these deals, offers, and specials before taking the plunge and leasing your new electric car.