Leasing has swiftly taken over the electric-vehicle market. Nearly 80% of new EVs bought at dealerships are now leased, according to Edmunds data cited by The Wall Street Journal.
That’s up from 16% at the beginning of last year, per Edmunds. And it’s at least triple the industry average, which sits around 20%. One caveat: since we’re talking about EVs bought at dealerships, these figures exclude direct-to-consumer EV makers like Rivian, Lucid and (most importantly) Tesla. Tesla tends to push leases less than many conventional brands, too. Since it makes the three best-selling EVs on sale, the full-market figure is likely considerably less than 80%.
Still, the rise of leasing is among the strangest dynamics in today’s EV market, and the long-term impacts could be immense.
Plus the rate of technology change. I considered leasing for the first time ever, because EVs are so new and the technology is rapidly changing. I ended up deciding Tesla is getting mature enough to buy.
If I were to buy from a legacy manufacturer, I see that most are really on their first generation, their first attempts at an EV, so likely have huge changes coming soon. For example, why would I buy with the old charging connector when they’ve announced they will start using NACS next year? I’m not buying into that, but I may choose to lease it for a few years then upgrade to something better
Yes, that’s a valid point. Either way you’ll need a dongle to connect to the other standard (CCS1/NACS), but it would be nice for the vehicle’s native port to be the one you’ll use most often going forward, which will be NACS.