$10,000 factory cash! Good Thur March 4th 2013.

The Volt is for my youngest son but he doesn't graduate from college until this May, so I have been driving it. I have learned that I could easily get by with a BEV for my daily driver.

 

Good for you John. Kids are growing up. EV is the way to go.

 

Sorry, 30k. As mentioned above, nothing stops you from calculating your taxes ahead of time and changing your withholdings NOW. No one is forcing you to wait until next year to pay less taxes.
CVRP turnaround is basically one month.
The Fit is basically half this car, literally, in every measurement. It's also a closed-end lease with no opportunity of buyout or sale at its conclusion. As counterintuitive as it might seem, the RAV is actually a more "fun" car to drive in terms of performance and handling.

We've covered this territory with the pip before. You have to finance through TFS. The only thing that you could do is have ALLY finance through TFS, pay off the loan in the first month, and then lease the car back out to you. But I doubt anyone is going to want to deal with that.

 

Re: the Fit EV, besides it being lease only and much smaller than a Rav4 EV, the Rav4 EV from the bottom of Testing Electric Vehicles in the Real World accelerates much faster, surprisingly brakes better, made it the thru slalom quicker (!) and had a slightly better skidpad while weighing ~800 lbs more, besides having longer range.

 

That's why I said "As counterintuitive as it might seem, the RAV is actually a more "fun" car to drive in terms of performance and handling."

 

The RAV must be fast because a Fit EV in blue passed me on the freeway like I was standing still and I was going 70 MPH. What is scary is you can hear a Porsche or Maserati with that tuned exhaust but the EV is stealth.

 

Go read the article above. RAV beats Fit by 2 seconds in 0-60.

 

I spoke to a Auto Editor at the local newspaper it was over a year ago an he said anything with EV you should lease it because the technology is progressing so rapidly that the older cars lose value quicker than other cars because they become obsolete quicker than traditional cars.

Not sure if it's true statement. Thoughts?

 

As long as the lease is properly structured, yes. There are some improperly structured leases and, IMO, the TFS lease is not properly structured for a vehicle with a $7,500 federal tax credit paid to the leasing company.

 

Agreed. TFS is asleep at the wheel

 

Or just prefers to keep the 7500 for themselves?

 

Pretty sure a 100-mile EV will still be worth at least $20k 3 years from now. That's a cost of $3k/year…way less than the Fit EV lease you advocate so much.
Or rather, put it another way: do you really think a compact SUV with sports sedan-like performance and 100-mile range will be worth less than $16k three years from now? I highly doubt it.

 

Right, or because Toyota's losing enough $ on each Rav4 EV as it is, that they don't want to lose more. Or, as I guessed earlier, they don't want to lease them and/or don't want them coming back at the end of the lease.

 

The car probably depreciates 10K if not more when you sign the non revocable sales contract.

 

Btw, while the NorCal deal isn't as great, it's not bad either: $8,800 instead of $10k.

 

That deal is insane, wish I didn't lease my PIP 6 months ago.

<dreaming>If Toyota ever gets desperate enough to trade against my 2012 PIP for those above mentioned lease numbers, let me know, I might make the trek from NY for that. </dreaming>

 

Just wait until March 10 for them to drop another $2k through TFS lol.

 

Joking around, or for real? Wife didn't even argue when I mentioned this crazy plan (was hoping she would stop me), and @ 0%, buying might be an option, just wondering where I can go if I do have problems with the drivetrain.

 

Your PIP like most cars depreciate when you drive off the lot. If you sell it you may take a bath. An expensive one at that