Purchase / Lease details

[leodoggie]

Do not buy or lease from Victory Chevy in Petaluma, ca. They tried to get me to pay $561 a month for a 36 month lease with 10,000 miles a year. They were rude and confrontational when I showed them my calculations proving their numbers were wrong. Some times the best buying decision is to walk away, which I did. I am disappointed in not getting my Bolt that I ordered three months ago, but I feel happy that I was able to keep cool and polite in that situation.

 

[michael]

Good move walking away. A lot of people would have knuckled under

This was one of the risks of wait listing...the dealer figures youre super eager

I recall days when gas hit $3 for the first time and people were paying $5000 over msrp for a Prius!!!!!

 

[ang]

Corrected the typo on the residual in the below:

MSRP 42925 vehicle + 525 wearcare
Taxed incentives 2500
Cash down payment 12,072.25 (11,500 down + 572.25 payment for wearcare including 9% tax)
Acquisition 595
Residual 60%
Months 36
Miles 10k
Money Factor 0.00133
Doc fee 109
Lic/Reg fee 370
Sales Tax 9%

For some reason Leasehackr is calculating a much lower monthly payment of $194/mo, compared to my lease I posted which shows about $250/mo. Could the discrepancy be due to the dealer actually applying a higher money factor, like 0.00172?

 

[bro19991]

Corrected the typo on the residual in the below:

MSRP 42925 vehicle + 525 wearcare
Taxed incentives 2500
Cash down payment 12,072.25 (11,500 down + 572.25 payment for wearcare including 9% tax)
Acquisition 595
Residual 60%
Months 36
Miles 10k
Money Factor 0.00133
Doc fee 109
Lic/Reg fee 370
Sales Tax 9%

For some reason Leasehackr is calculating a much lower monthly payment of $194/mo, compared to my lease I posted which shows about $250/mo. Could the discrepancy be due to the dealer actually applying a higher money factor, like 0.00172?

Money factor is almost 3 times higher than it should be. Dealer is padding it for profit.

 

[Anonymous]

Here is the 36 mo. / 15k write up from the Bolt I've ordered. See any surprises here? Thanks for all the help.View attachment 2017-01-08 08_07_24-Dan - Bolt Lease - George.jpg

 

[wwhitney]

For some reason Leasehackr is calculating a much lower monthly payment of $194/mo, compared to my lease I posted which shows about $250/mo.

I ran your lease numbers through the leasehackr calculator myself, and this confused me too for a while. The issue is that when you put in a downpayment on the leasehackr calculator, it calculates your driveoff payment as downpayment plus sales tax plus first month's payment plus registration fees.

So if the $11,500 figure (ignoring the wearcare, which you fully paid for upfront) is your drive-off amount, you need to adjust the downpayment entry in the calculator until your calculated drive-off becomes $11,500. For your numbers, that makes the downpayment $9,664--the rest of the drive off payment is sales tax on that downpayment, plus the first month's payment, plus registration fees. That gives a monthly payment of $252 including tax, which is a close match to your lease.

Cheers, Wayne

 

[JupiterMoon]

Below are my lease figures plus a scan of the actual lease.
Would like to verify that the $250.74/month resulting lease payment matches the terms below I was told by dealer I got.

MSRP 42925 vehicle + 525 wearcare
Taxed incentives 2500
Cash down payment 12,072.25 (11,500 down + 572.25 payment for wearcare including 9% tax)
Acquisition 595
Residual 61%
Months 36
Miles 10k
Money Factor 0.00133
Doc fee 109
Lic/Reg fee 370
Sales Tax 9%

For some reason Leasehackr is calculating a much lower monthly payment than the actual lease.
Does anyone know what entry for "Down Payment" to put on Leasehackr if not the customer's cash down?
Since the lease paperwork doesn't spell out money factor anywhere, maybe MF is the source of discrepancy between what I was told and what Leasehakr calculates for monthly payment?

Leasehakr doesn't calculate the lease properly. It's way off. I don't know what leasing calculators dealers use but they are never on par with what is on the internet.

Calculating leases is very very easy so long as you know the formulas and apply them correctly.

Where the dealers and financing companies screw you is how they apply the federal credits and fees and taxes into these formulas. Applying the full federal credit to the cap cost will save you a lot more money than inflating the residual like some claim GM or the financing companies have done to the Bolt in order to reduce lease payments. How you get hit on the taxes in a lease is critical to understand.

 

[JupiterMoon]

Here is the 36 mo. / 15k write up from the Bolt I've ordered. See any surprises here? Thanks for all the help.

How did they come up with TOTAL CAP REDUCTION of $3194.38?

 

[wwhitney]

How did they come up with TOTAL CAP REDUCTION of $3194.38?

That number was chosen so that the the cap reduction, plus tax on the cap reduction, plus registration/other fees, plus first month's payment, would come out to $4,500 even. With the $2,500 credit from GM, that makes a driveoff amount of $2,000.

If I pay attention to the difference between cap reduction and driveoff, the leasehackr calculator has been accurate for me so far. Note that the leasehackr calculator calls the cap reduction "down payment" and calculates the resulting driveoff amount. An alternate usage of the word down payment is for the driveoff amount, so that was confusing at first.

Cheers, Wayne

 

[ang]

For some reason Leasehackr is calculating a much lower monthly payment of $194/mo, compared to my lease I posted which shows about $250/mo.

I ran your lease numbers through the leasehackr calculator myself, and this confused me too for a while. The issue is that when you put in a downpayment on the leasehackr calculator, it calculates your driveoff payment as downpayment plus sales tax plus first month's payment plus registration fees.

So if the $11,500 figure (ignoring the wearcare, which you fully paid for upfront) is your drive-off amount, you need to adjust the downpayment entry in the calculator until your calculated drive-off becomes $11,500. For your numbers, that makes the downpayment $9,664--the rest of the drive off payment is sales tax on that downpayment, plus the first month's payment, plus registration fees. That gives a monthly payment of $252 including tax, which is a close match to your lease.

Cheers, Wayne

Got it. Thanks for explaining this difference in terminology with Leasehackr. Now I can calculate away and am getting numbers that closely compare with the dealership.

 

[gpsman]

All discussions are regarding leasing.

What is the best way to get a "smart" deal via purchasing? Who has some purchase stories to tell?
What are interest rates for purchasing?
How much to put down on a purchase?

I kept my Dodge truck for 22 years.
I kept my Honda Insight for 16 years.
I have a 2005 Ford EscapeHybrid now.
I have zero car payments and zero to trade in.

Is there any GOOD reason not to keep the Bolt for 10 or 16 years?

 

[Schnort]

Is there any GOOD reason not to keep the Bolt for 10 or 16 years?

Its mostly risk reduction.

Nobody's owned an EV for more than ~5 years, so it's an unknown how well the car (the battery, specifically) holds up in the long run, or how much better the unseen new models might be.

The longest running cars, LEAFs, haven't done terribly well(particularly in the heat). A lot of them have suffered significant battery fade (loss of capacity, i.e. range) due to the aging of the batteries. Supposedly, the newer cars have solved/mitigated this problem(I haven't noticed any in my 2 year old i3, and I live in Texas), but there just aren't other older EVs to compare to.

So, most people prefer to lease, to put the risk on the manufacturer, and upgrade to the next new shiny thing in 2-3 years.

 

[Nagorak]

All discussions are regarding leasing.

What is the best way to get a "smart" deal via purchasing? Who has some purchase stories to tell?
What are interest rates for purchasing?
How much to put down on a purchase?

I kept my Dodge truck for 22 years.
I kept my Honda Insight for 16 years.
I have a 2005 Ford EscapeHybrid now.
I have zero car payments and zero to trade in.

Is there any GOOD reason not to keep the Bolt for 10 or 16 years?

Another thing is that the Federal tax rebate is nonrefundable (basically use it or lose it) and a lot of people don't qualify for the whole thing.

Thus far the value of EVs has also not held up well at all. You can find 2013 Leafs with low miles for $7500. Even accounting for the tax credit that is dirt cheap for a car only a couple years old. There's too much headway being made on batteries right now, so just a couple years later the car looks antiquated (the longer range may mean this is less of a concern for the Bolt).

The fact that almost everyone leases also means there's a ton of cars coming off lease starting 36 months out, and an inflated residual discourages people from buying it out. That may be less of a concern if you're not worried about resale value though.

 

[pdxbolt]

Is there any GOOD reason not to keep the Bolt for 10 or 16 years?

Its mostly risk reduction.

Nobody's owned an EV for more than ~5 years, so it's an unknown how well the car (the battery, specifically) holds up in the long run, or how much better the unseen new models might be.

The longest running cars, LEAFs, haven't done terribly well(particularly in the heat). A lot of them have suffered significant battery fade (loss of capacity, i.e. range) due to the aging of the batteries. Supposedly, the newer cars have solved/mitigated this problem(I haven't noticed any in my 2 year old i3, and I live in Texas), but there just aren't other older EVs to compare to.

So, most people prefer to lease, to put the risk on the manufacturer, and upgrade to the next new shiny thing in 2-3 years.

I dunno. I have owned my electric car since August 2013. There has been no decline in the battery.
But more importantly, I believe leasing is a bad deal.
I have done it once and would never do it again.
Problem was I had to move and could not take the car with me for a variety
of reasons. So I went back to the dealership where I had to write a check for the entire car when I returned it. No way I'd ever lease again.

 

[michael]

My Focus Electric was down 22% when I returned it after 3 years/54,000 miles. I definitely think leasing is the way to go.

Bolt should be much better due to large battery not being so heavily stressed as battery in an 80-mile car, but there's no way it will be good to own in 10 years unless the battery is replaced. In 10 years it will be a 150 mile car in a world of 300 or 400 mile cars that recharge in 10 minutes.

 

[JupiterMoon]

How did they come up with TOTAL CAP REDUCTION of $3194.38?

That number was chosen so that the the cap reduction, plus tax on the cap reduction, plus registration/other fees, plus first month's payment, would come out to $4,500 even. With the $2,500 credit from GM, that makes a driveoff amount of $2,000.

If I pay attention to the difference between cap reduction and driveoff, the leasehackr calculator has been accurate for me so far. Note that the leasehackr calculator calls the cap reduction "down payment" and calculates the resulting driveoff amount. An alternate usage of the word down payment is for the driveoff amount, so that was confusing at first.

Cheers, Wayne

Hey Wayne,

So let's see.

$4500 - $3194.38 = $1305.62

They call this "Amt Applied Upfront" which I'm not sure what that means frankly. How do they get this number? What is it based on?

The critical thing here is how do they calculate the BASE PAYMENT and INTEREST? What do they base it on? What many financing companies (or dealers who have their own financing) do is double up on fees (adding them twice in many places) and it raises lease amounts by $50-100 a month on cars in this price range. They also don't apply the full $7500 tax credit which is a scam and should be applied fully as they get the entire credit anyway.

We need to break this down to the core:

BASE PAYMENT = (CAP COST-RESIDUAL)/#months

INTEREST = (CAP COST+ RESIDUAL)*MONEY FACTOR

MONTHLY TAX = (BASE PAY + INTEREST) * TAX RATE

But the games are played with:

A) What the cap cost is (wildly fluctuating with many not even having the tax credit applied)
B) What the money factor is (I've see wildly fluctuating money factors on the forums)
C) How the taxes and "Drive off" fees are applied
D) Any other bloat they can throw in there to raise the payments.

I went to Community Chevy the other day and they wanted $600 a month for the Premier with $4000 down. I laughed at them. Two days later they called saying Chevy has a program for $359/month with around $1600 due at signing. Surprise surprise.

The lease calculators the dealers use (the ones with huge blue MSDOS like screens) are filled with ways to pad costs that they won't disclose to you. If and when I'm ready to lease this vehicle, I will ask they go over every single line item of their calculations and show me how they got it. If they can't explain it or won't, I walk. I should take less than 15-20 minutes. If they aren't willing to spend that time going over things, screw them. Let the suckers who think they know what leasing is about get screwed instead.

 

[tedkidd]

All discussions are regarding leasing.

What is the best way to get a "smart" deal via purchasing? Who has some purchase stories to tell?
What are interest rates for purchasing?
How much to put down on a purchase?

I kept my Dodge truck for 22 years.
I kept my Honda Insight for 16 years.
I have a 2005 Ford EscapeHybrid now.
I have zero car payments and zero to trade in.

Is there any GOOD reason not to keep the Bolt for 10 or 16 years?

What year and model phone do you have? Do you think you will live forever?

Besides the capital risk avoidance (and for some - ability to receive full benefit of the tax credit), how about the fact these cars are getting WAY COOLER almost daily?
How about the fact that when the tax credit is fairly leveraged in, you can drive a brand new car every three years for LESS than the cost of owning one car for 6?

I like getting a new phone every so often, they tend to keep getting better. Same for these cars. If you have a flip phone I guess the only reason is repair risk that occurs once you are out of warranty, and the fact it might be more expensive as you only leverage one tax credit into your total cost of ownership.

 

[Anonymous]

I went to Community Chevy the other day and they wanted $600 a month for the Premier with $4000 down. I laughed at them. Two days later they called saying Chevy has a program for $359/month with around $1600 due at signing. Surprise surprise.

I think that offer he gave you is for Chevy Bolt EV LT, not the premier. Chevy has that on their website for western region, $359 per month with $1539 due at signing, with an MSRP of $36620.

 

[tedkidd]

Great post!!!!

How did they come up with TOTAL CAP REDUCTION of $3194.38?

That number was chosen so that the the cap reduction, plus tax on the cap reduction, plus registration/other fees, plus first month's payment, would come out to $4,500 even. With the $2,500 credit from GM, that makes a driveoff amount of $2,000.

If I pay attention to the difference between cap reduction and driveoff, the leasehackr calculator has been accurate for me so far. Note that the leasehackr calculator calls the cap reduction "down payment" and calculates the resulting driveoff amount. An alternate usage of the word down payment is for the driveoff amount, so that was confusing at first.

Cheers, Wayne

Hey Wayne,

So let's see.

$4500 - $3194.38 = $1305.62

They call this "Amt Applied Upfront" which I'm not sure what that means frankly. How do they get this number? What is it based on?

The critical thing here is how do they calculate the BASE PAYMENT and INTEREST? What do they base it on? What many financing companies (or dealers who have their own financing) do is double up on fees (adding them twice in many places) and it raises lease amounts by $50-100 a month on cars in this price range. They also don't apply the full $7500 tax credit which is a scam and should be applied fully as they get the entire credit anyway.

We need to break this down to the core:

BASE PAYMENT = (CAP COST-RESIDUAL)/#months

INTEREST = (CAP COST+ RESIDUAL)*MONEY FACTOR

MONTHLY TAX = (BASE PAY + INTEREST) * TAX RATE

But the games are played with:

A) What the cap cost is (wildly fluctuating with many not even having the tax credit applied)
B) What the money factor is (I've see wildly fluctuating money factors on the forums)
C) How the taxes and "Drive off" fees are applied
D) Any other bloat they can throw in there to raise the payments.

I went to Community Chevy the other day and they wanted $600 a month for the Premier with $4000 down. I laughed at them. Two days later they called saying Chevy has a program for $359/month with around $1600 due at signing. Surprise surprise.

The lease calculators the dealers use (the ones with huge blue MSDOS like screens) are filled with ways to pad costs that they won't disclose to you. If and when I'm ready to lease this vehicle, I will ask they go over every single line item of their calculations and show me how they got it. If they can't explain it or won't, I walk. I should take less than 15-20 minutes. If they aren't willing to spend that time going over things, screw them. Let the suckers who think they know what leasing is about get screwed instead.

 

[JupiterMoon]

I think that offer he gave you is for Chevy Bolt EV LT, not the premier. Chevy has that on their website for western region, $359 per month with $1539 due at signing, with an MSRP of $36620.

Yes it was an LT but we can easily extrapolate to a Premier....and it's no where near $600 a month with $4k down.