To me, part of the benefit of leasing is avoiding downside risk while maintaining most options of ownership including upside potential.
Tesla's leasing program removes a bunch of these, and that loss is pretty apparent given the way the car market changed this year.
I like not being exposed to excess depreciation, but I may also want to keep the car. And if the value of the car way exceeds the buyout, even if I don't want to keep it I'll get paid to hand off the option to buy.
Add wild cars of FSD, Tesla Taxi, desire to buy out early, etc.... and losing that purchase option really starts to look like a bad deal.
If there was a buyout option, leasing would be killer because I could switch cars as frequently as I want and I'd avoid the sales tax on all but the part of the car I use, and without that big hit.
Now that we are in December and the price has went up probably over 10k, does it still make sense to buy over lease? Questioning this from the perspective of "will the Model Y stay at 62k (that I am getting mine for, ordered last week)" and hold it's value to resell in 2-3 years? Or will it "normalize" and dip back down to 47-53k and then the 62k car I bought 3 years ago is way overvalued and a bad deal at the time? Part of me feels like this will be the new normal price BUT with production ramping up so much especially with Texas coming, I'm not so sure. Thoughts?
Lol. Right?
I would never lease it if I did not have the option to keep it at the end. Unless the cost of the lease was incredibly cheap.
I leased a Smart ED and a Bolt for $150 per month. Both of those cars depreciated so fast market value was $10k less than buyout.