Leasing: Where does the $7500 Fed. tax credit go?

[Kandiru]

I just had a lease quote from Tesla, significantly more pricey than what the estimator showed:

Please treat these figures as very close estimates.

Cash price of Model S 90D	$92,700 (no autopilot)
Tax	$3,331.23
Down Payment	$5,000 ($2,500 order payment + additional ($2,500 at signing)
Total due at signing	$9,449.23 (Down payment + first monthly payment + tax + $700 acquisition fee)
Monthly Payment	$1118/mo. @12k mi/year
Residual value	$55,704 (60% after 36 months)

The tricky part of the whole deal is that they pushed me very hard and long to put down a deposit before eventually
making me save a car and click "pay deposit later" just to be able to get a lease quote, which they refused to do otherwise.

 

[ChadFeldheimer]

Even Tesla will tell you not to lease one of their vehicles if there's even a TINY chance you might want to buy at lease end since you'll pay $7,500 extra for the car.
The way they're handling the Tax Credit does result in a higher lease payment than usual. ($25 more/month in my case).
Tesla "Spins" the way they do leases as a benefit to the consumer despite the opposite being true.
Their Money Factor (0.00160/3.84%) is higher than is typical for automotive finance companies. (Example - Nissan Leaf: .00027/.648%)

Playing devil's advocate for a bit:

Is the Nissan Leaf money factor typical? Seems quite low. I recall that Nissan had built up inventory and was having trouble moving the cars off their lots. The very low money factor might be an artifact of a different supply/demand balance.

Lease agreements force the bank to carry additional risk over a standard car purchase loan (i.e. if the residual in the lease turns out to have been set too high). So it makes sense for lease interest rates to be somewhat higher to account for this additional risk.

- - - Updated - - -

So the answer is...finance and use the Resale Value Guarantee.
Same peace of mind of a lease but you get to keep the $7,500.

For what it's worth, my residual (before adding in the $7500) is about $5000 more than the resale value guarantee. The resale value guarantee is useful, but a pretty low bar.

 

[brkaus]

For what it's worth, my residual (before adding in the $7500) is about $5000 more than the resale value guarantee. The resale value guarantee is useful, but a pretty low bar.

Yes, the resale value guarantee is low. It's a safety net. Not sure it's worth it, depending on finance terms one can get elsewhere.

Regarding adding the $7500 on the residual, the residual is an arbitrary number picked be the leasing company. So it's still an arbitrary number.