You might think leasing a brand new electric SUV would be pretty costly, particularly compared to picking up a compact sedan or hatch. However, if you know where to look, you can get an electric Hyundai SUV remarkably cheap for a couple of years.
Purchasing a car is a big commitment. You have to pay for the whole thing, and then figure out how to dispose of it when you eventually grow tired of it. Leases let you get a new car without making the same sort of long term commitment. Depending on the deals and incentives involved, you can often find yourself in a brand-new vehicle for a surprisingly low amount of money.
Full disclosure, this is us flicking through Leasehackr and eyeing off what looks surprisingly affordable; nobody is paying us to write this. It’s a website that puts together pre-negotiated lease deals and advertises them across the country. Right now, there are a bunch of EVs available in the sub-$200 a month range, but you have to do some hunting to find the best deals.
Right now, Leasehackr is advertising hot deals on the Hyundai Kona Electric SEL. It’s a four-door, five-seater compact SUV, with an MSRP starting at $39,000. However, if you’re willing to lease instead of buy, you can get out for as low as $199 a month for 24 months right now.
The SEL trim offers a perfectly-practical 261 miles of range, by virtue of having a larger battery than the base model SE. It’s no racehorse, but it offers a healthy 201 horsepower to get you down the road, with the single electric motor driving the front wheels. Other upgrades over the base trim include power seats, heated seats, roof rails, and AC vents for the passengers in the second row.
Leasehackr’s deal runs out at the end of the month, or until the stock of available vehicles is leased. It’s available in Florida, but it’s also possible to ship the vehicle to neighboring states. Beyond the $199 a month, you’re up for $3,700 due to taxes and fees, and a further $699 service charge, but there is otherwise no lump sum down payment required. You can cut the monthly rate even lower to $177/month if you happen to qualify for the military or first responder program.
Maybe you want something weirder, like an unpopular Toyota with a name that nobody can pronounce. Welp, you can score yourself a bZ4x for just $189 a month in New York and neighboring states if you’re thirsty for that. Toyota can’t even get mad that I called it unpopular because I was nice enough to double-check that I got the weird capitalization right.
You’ll pay a chunk at signing—$4,168 for New York taxes and fees, plus a $699 service fee, but there’s no extra down payment required. You’re good for 10,000 miles a year over the 33 month lease period. However, you can sweeten the deal by busting it down to $158/month if you qualify for the Toyota Loyalty discount.
Meanwhile, if you’re in Northern California, you can snag a 2025 Kia Niro EV for $189 a month. It’s based on the same platform as the Hyundai Kona, funnily enough. Even better, you’ll pay just $2,763 in taxes and fees up front, with no additional down payment, and you get 10,000 miles a year for the 24 month lease period.
This is perhaps the hottest deal going right now. Even with upfront taxes and fees included, you’re only paying $305 a month for the two year lease period. That’s not a bad deal for driving a brand-new SUV with a $41,250 sticker price for a couple of years.
These deals might sound a little less tempting when you bundle in the upfront registration and fees in any given state. However, it’s worth noting that these deals eclipse just about everything else out there, including for regular compact cars.
Just imagine. You want to lease a Kia K4, with an MSRP of $25,300? You’d be lucky to pay $235 a month, and that’s before taxes and registration. You could get stuck paying $232 a month for a Dodge Hornet (eww), or $265 a month for a Nissan Kicks (at least it looks good).
In any case, don’t expect deals like this to be around forever. EVs are about to get more expensive as the federal tax credits disappear, which could also have knock-on effects to supply as manufacturers reassess their production strategy. That’s expected to happen on September 30, so if you really want to lease or buy a new EV, the time to do it is probably now.
Ultimately, leases aren’t for everyone. But, if they do appeal to you, it’s worth noting that some of the cheapest vehicles to lease right now are EVs, and the monthly payments are low. They’re not as good as those insane $0 Fiat leases, but they’re still compelling. Good luck out there.
Top graphic images: Toyota; Hyundai; Kia
Still smarting over our Lyriq lease, 0 down, 500 a month, 12kmiles. my only sadness? They offered me 3 years at 510/month and I should have taken it
I mean I guess, but divide that *hefty* down payment by the lease duration and in the case of the Toyota that payment becomes $315. Except you’re letting them sit on a bunch of your money interest free for all that time.
Since I am an accountant I beg to differ with your interpretation of costs. Lets divide that downstroke by the number of months and add it to the monthly hit shale we?
Kona. $354
BRZwhatever. $337
Niro. $304
K4. $369
Kicks. $425
There are lies, damned lies, statistics and now car dealers numbers
We got our prologue lease, AWD base model for $288 a month, less than $3k down, for 3 years, we’ll see how much it’s worth at the end, but for evs definitely keep an eye on them before September if you’re looking.
Could someone please tell me what the taxes are based on? Just tax on the total number of payments over the term of the lease, right? NOT on taxes for the full MSRP of the car, chopped up into monthly payments for the duration of the lease, right? $4K in taxes (and fees? what fees exactly?) plus another $699. fee from the dealer sounds like a LOT.
Depends on your State and any trade in value you may have.
Sorry, I’m still a bit confuzzled. Leaving out the trade-in thing as an unecessary variable in this instance, is a lessor paying their state sales taxes in full for the duration of the lease (i.e.: your local sales tax on 24 or 36 months of payments, etc…) all at once at the origination of the lease?
This is how it works, right? So sales taxes aren’t collected monthly on each payment during the lease? And if the lessor were to elect to buy the car for its residual value at the end of the lease, he or she (now the buyer) would pay their local sales tax on that residual/remaining amount only right, since they paid the first few years of tax when the first leased the car?
Sorry for my confusion. I did actually lease a car once many years ago, but have no recollection of the details, other than that it was an unreliable car (a ’98 Mercedes CLK).
You pay upfront taxes on some parts of the down, and you pay them monthly as well.
If you go to Leasehackr, that’ll help you understand it a bit more. they have breakdowns and a lease calculator.
You can make any lease $200/month if you pay enough up front. I think Cadillac was once offering 0/month leases by paying for the entire lease up front.
This.
Caddy in CA still have a ‘One Pay’ on their website – it’s about $30k for a Lyriq. it saves you paying almost if not all the interest / money factor..
Currently planning on leasing a Mach E – the Ford dealer quoted me $1k down total, with a $350 a month payment and 12k miles/year for 36 months. IMO that’s a better deal than any of these with their $4k+ down payments.
So, in the examples listed above, the upfront payment is to cover taxes and fees. It’s $0 downpayment on the lease itself. I’d be checking carefully regarding the taxes and fees on that Ford lease, outside of the $1,000 downpayment on the lease itself.
When I lease I have to tell the dealer zero down is zero, dont make me pay something, bundle that in the monthly payment, that way I can compare apples to apples with a different dealer or car.
I’m not a fan of leasing cars, but those seem to be decent deals for people who don’t drive a lot, are not picky about what they drive (as long as it is new), and have a place to plug it in at home. Aside from those specific customers, these aren’t great deals (especially when you consider the upfront fees). The Niro, Kona, and bizzyforks are all utterly soulless transportation boxes. I don’t think I would consider any of these unless they were literally free.
Do you have to qualify for the federal tax credit to get these payments? Or does the dealer retain some sort of equivalent incentive?
If you’re leasing you aren’t the one actually ‘buying’ the car, the lessor bank is who then rents it you. So the bank is the one actually claiming the credit as a commercial purchase (which also doesn’t have the final assembly/battery origin requirements of a private sale), and the bank then passes that on as an incentive against the cost of the vehicle (capitalized cost reduction).
That’s what I figured, thanks!
I’m impressed with your grasp of the topic Darnon. 🙂
Hold up a second they make a purple Kona?!
That’s a misleading photo – it’s more of a dusty blue called Meta Blue Pearl. My Neoteric Yellow Kona looks unrealistically green-tinged (rather than yellow) in a lot of photos.
Ad: $0 down
Also: $4200 due at signing.
No, it’s not $0 down, it’s $4200 to get it on day 0.
Can we just get straight prices?
$4,900 with dealer fee. These are notorious lease ad tactics and I wish they’d just stop. Put it all into the payment and show it with nothing due; and nothing due on the back end except damage or mileage.
Agree! If you click on the info button, that up front payment includes additional “dealer fees”.
We will never get straight prices ever because the dealership lobby is incredibly powerful and devoid of ethics….and the current administration is waging war on consumer protections so they can continue to exploit poor people to build their already inconceivable amounts of wealth.
Don’t forget that also doesn’t include taxes and titling. Probably more like $6k down to get to that price.
But do you get the TruCoat for no charge?
No, Money Down!
10,000 or 12,000 miles a year. I typically do about 15,000. Mileage limits have always been the buggaboo for me and leasing.
I’m with you, but I think for an average EV from these classes, it’s going to innately be lower than average because it’s going to skew toward commuters (mostly under 40 miles/day, 5 days/week). With perfect attendance, that’s exactly 10k miles at 50 weeks/year. I didn’t plan that, it just coincidentally worked out 🙂
So yeah, if you’re replacing a car 1:1 with that usage, it’s not going to make much sense unless the extra mileage allowance is reasonably priced.
I think it makes perfect sense to lease an EV under normal circumstances, doubly so when you have all these deals and the sunsetting of the tax credit happening.
Worst case, you walk away at the end of 3 years and realize you ended up paying a little closer to a purchase price than you would have liked (because of the up-front fixed costs, which over just 3 years drives the month cost up much more than paying similar fees and keeping it longer). But you hedged your bets against the EV market advancing rapidly and making your asset semi-obsolete. It wasn’t even your asset!
Best case, battery tech stalls (due to some unforeseen and outside forces, such as if a meth head broke into the White House and started a trade war. Just use your imagination). At the end of 3 years, you have a car worth $20k and the buyout is just $12k or whatever. Pay it off or visit a credit union — where “new car financing” usually extends 2-3 years back — and finance the last little bit over a few more years. You win.
I’m all for encouraging an ownership society because many of the powers-that-be are pushing us all to rent everything. But this one benefits the consumer pretty well.
These are all 24 month leases except for that bizarro 33 months for the buzzy forks.
Yep, I just saw that. I didn’t even realize those existed, that’s why I generically said “3 years.” (most I’ve seen are 39 months for whatever reason). The shorter the term, the more those up-front and back-end fees tend to sting.
39 months this time of year, so that you’ll return it in Fall of ’28, when the ’29 models are on the lot.
2028 models might just be showing up in Stellantis lots by then, assuming they limp along.
With 39 month deals you have an extra year of tags to pay, which might be a lot if you’re in CA,etc.
At the same time the shorter term also makes the tax credit equivalent rebate more impactful to the total cost of the lease.
True! I’d want to see in writing that they’re passing along the entire amount — I’ve seen some cases where they basically split it with the consumer.
oh, THAT’S how it’s pronounced