Andy131 wrote:

Don't get me wrong. I would struggle to PCP a diesel DS with that mileage, but buy a year old one on HP and sell after 5 years - yes you are going to be in the 180k mileage region, but you still have the car as a deposit. Who is going to take the risk of a used EV (battery) with 180k on the clock as opposed to a good old "reliable" diesel?

That’s fine if you have £30k+ lying around to spend on a car but most of us don’t. I was looking just recently at leasing a car. It’s OTR price is £38k, the lease I was interested in was just under £400 a month over four years so a total cost of lease of just under £20k, or fifty per cent of the cost of the car. Frankly, I don’t see how the lease company makes any money as the residual value of the car after four years isn’t going to be more than fifty per cent. Even if I had the cash, it would probably be cheaper to try and earn some interest on it and lease the car.

Used to work with a crowd who ‘being younger’ loved the idea of running around in brand new cars with the automatic option of upgrading to a new set of wheels every three years. They were happy shelling out hundreds every month for top of the range models they’d otherwise just dream of driving. Not one of them had ever thought that at some point they’d have to pay out money to actually own a car.

Simon J wrote:

That’s fine if you have £30k+ lying around to spend on a car but most of us don’t. I was looking just recently at leasing a car. It’s OTR price is £38k, the lease I was interested in was just under £400 a month over four years so a total cost of lease of just under £20k, or fifty per cent of the cost of the car. Frankly, I don’t see how the lease company makes any money as the residual value of the car after four years isn’t going to be more than fifty per cent. Even if I had the cash, it would probably be cheaper to try and earn some interest on it and lease the car.

Sidthecat wrote:

Used to work with a crowd who ‘being younger’ loved the idea of running around in brand new cars with the automatic option of upgrading to a new set of wheels every three years. They were happy shelling out hundreds every month for top of the range models they’d otherwise just dream of driving. Not one of them had ever thought that at some point they’d have to pay out money to actually own a car.

Exactly this, my first car fifty years ago was a 1965 clapped out Mini which cost me £50……things usually get better

Edit : which was about four weeks wages, I suppose equivalent now of a £1000 runabout. Regards

David

Lovely i6 has now gone, but not me......

Please let me know if anything in my post offends you, as I may wish to offend you again......

Boxbrownie wrote:

It doesn’t matter on the amount, it’s the same con whether you lease a £14K Dacia or a £150K Range Rover.

All your doing is paying the company who leased the car to you it’s depreciation costs plus a chunk of profit for their time, they get their money back when they dispose of the car at auction.

And then say “hello” again when you walk through the door and offer them the depreciation and chunk of profit on the next new car for your neighbours to admire. Regards

David

Lovely i6 has now gone, but not me......

Please let me know if anything in my post offends you, as I may wish to offend you again......

But that’s true of any purchase or lease. Leaving aside the fuel savings of your i3, you’ve still paid to have it sitting outside your door. Perhaps it has held its value particularly well, and second hand car prices also seem to be crazy at the moment, but at the end of the day you’ve still got a depreciating asset. In the example I gave, which I’ll admit seemed exceptional, the lease payments covered fifty percent of the cost of the car. The lease company have carried the declining cost over the period of the lease, but would have to get fifty per cent of its original cost after four years just to break even.

Cut it whatever way you will, someone has to pay for the depreciation and it’s always the owner/leasee no matter how it’s financed.

Yes someone has to pay it…..but the customer pays it not the company they make a profit.

Forget my cost savings on fuel, completely.

Had I leased it originally instead of buying outright it would have been roughly £450 per month for three years and had to hand it back after three years which is £16200 over those three years, the deposit was about £4000 so I’m total it would have cost me £20200 in three years > £561 per month.

Because I bought it outright it cost me £32000 it is now worth £18500 now, that’s £13500 over 72 months which is £187.50p per month.

Forget the fuel saving, can you not see that buying outright was cheaper? Regards

David

Lovely i6 has now gone, but not me......

Please let me know if anything in my post offends you, as I may wish to offend you again......

Agreed, the fuel saving is irrelevant. And in your case, the seemingly high residual value of your car after six years would make a PCP disadvantageous if you didn’t avail of the option to buy. PCPs really only make sense, I think, if you choose to buy the car at the end of the period. You’re basically financing a portion of the car's price with the option to acquire it by paying the balance. If you don’t take up the option you’ve been paying for more of the car than you needed to, so to speak. With the lease that I was looking at last week, the payments - over four years in my case - would have more or less equalled the notional depreciation and the car was expected to be worth half its OTR price. In that case, the lease makes perfect sense but of course there’s no option to buy with a lease. So you have to start all over again, but with a new car, instead of actually owning the car under a PCP which of course is now 3/4 years old and out of warranty.

I don’t think there’s one answer that works for everyone. In my case, the lease I was looking at made much more sense - for me - than either a PCP or, had I the spare £40k ( ), buying the car outright.

I may yet go ahead with the deal as for me it’s a no brainer. As I said YMMV.

Volvo Cars do 'All In' Leasing on their Battery Powered XC40.

If you scroll down to the bottom of the page, it will give you the cost of running a BEV of similar size to the FL2.

Quoted are a Flexible, 3 years Contract Lease and the cost of Buying outright.

From what I can see the leasing includes most things apart from insurance.

https://www.volvocars.com/uk/v/cars/xc40-e...D0QAvD_BwE

The main advantage of leasing seems to be the fact that you can more easily update your BEV quickly as the technology improves. FL2 XS SD4 Auto 2010 2012-2017 (21k - 91k miles) (MY2011)
FL2 Metropolis SD4 Auto 2014 2017- (16k - 76k+ miles) (MY2015)

Interesting thread
My take is the reason for the EV is to save the planet but the much bigger picture is the ongoing costs of production and the potential moral obligation to do more to save the planet.
So avoid the notion of renewing whatever all the time and get better use out of what you have bought. This cuts down on the environmental costs of production which is higher on EVs.
PCPs are a means of selling more cars to produce more (usual business model) but everyone is banging on about the environment but still participating in renewing cars every 3 years....regardless of whether they are EVs or ICE.
Would it not be better to keep the car for say 5 years and in time slightly reduce overall production?

My car is 9 years old and ill maintain it myself. I also have other equipment that i maintain and plan to keep. Therefore trying to reduce carbon production costs.

Ironically i am also much better off without the costs of leasing etc. This money is used to keep vehicle on the road in best possible condition but that doesn't cost me £300 to £400 per month which leasing would

Our reason for an EV is they drive so much better than an ICE vehicle, the cost saving is nice as well but the main reason is the feel of the power delivery and ease of use and reliability, our has only seen the dealer for service every two years since we bought it nearly seven years ago.

Oh and before we get the “oh no battery life” it shows exactly the same range every morning as it did when we picked it up.

Don’t get me wrong I loved the FL2 i6 and the two FL2 diesels we had before, but not withstanding the off road abilities the i3 is so much nicer to live with.

I’d still like a full blown new Defender though, rather like those So not out to save the planet here. Regards

David

Lovely i6 has now gone, but not me......

Please let me know if anything in my post offends you, as I may wish to offend you again......

@Boxbrownie,

Is the EV the only vehicle in your household? We would have liked to get an EV to complement, not replace, our FL2 but with living in an apartment with no possibility in the foreseeable future of easy access to charging it’s really not feasible. Likewise, a plug-in hybrid is impossible. But a regular hybrid (not a mild hybrid) is tempting although you don’t have that effortless, and quiet, EV driving experience.

It is now, one of the reasons we sold the FL2 i6 was we were never using it, just occasionally to keep it moving!

Since we’ve had the i3 we’ve also had a Boxster S, a full fat Range Rover and the i6 but each one although nice to drive was just a money pit (well except the Boxster S, the only vehicle that actually appreciated in value while we had it for two years, the dealer we bought it from bought it back for £2K more!) they cost too much to service and keep running and we’re hardly ever used them TBH, just the occasional long run to Norfolk, not the Porsche though that was purely a fun bucket list purchase

If you have no off road parking or an employer who doesn’t have charging in their car park (or your retired of course) then an EV is a bit of a no no presently, it’s just too difficult to keep finding a charger if you don’t have your own.

We bought it because we do and it is a revelation to pop out to the car for a journey somewhere to find it’s always full of fuel/electric. Our two main places we visit occasional for family stuff is Norfolk and Malvern one is a one charge journey the other a two, not too bad as we make the stop a rest/eating/relief stop as well of course, about 30 minutes at each.

But being by the beach the kids usually are more than happy to come to us  Regards

David

Lovely i6 has now gone, but not me......

Please let me know if anything in my post offends you, as I may wish to offend you again......