Understandable but you CAN buy a Smart outright. And you don't have to
rent the battery if you don't want to. The rental period can be for up
to 10 years and is $80/mo. The nice thing about a rental is that
anything that goes wrong with the battery--including prematurely losing
capacity--and it's their problem.
No rebate but if you don't want to lease you can buy for 0.9% ARP for
0-60 months.
Certainly the EV1 was a trauma I don't want to see repeated but I think
there's enough critical mass of EV manufacturers that it can't happen
again. Certainly those compliance cars only available in California may
disappear but I think the rest will stay around.
--Rick
On 3/15/2014 10:36 PM, EVDL Administrator wrote:
On 15 Mar 2014 at 13:39, nicklogan wrote:
I always considered a lease a sucker's game and have never even bought
a new car, but this [Smart ED deal] was too good to pass up.
Maybe I've missed something, but it seems to me that when they want to
stimulate ICEV sales, the manufacturers offer rebates. I haven't seen any
factory rebates on EVs, just lease bargains. Have I missed some?
Something to think about: GM didn't sell EV1s, only leased them. They knew
they were going to get out of EVs as soon as they could, and didn't want to
have to support them with parts and service long-term. Hence those heart-
rending photos of EV1 morgues.
http://www.evnut.com/ev1_crushed.htm
At the end of lease I'll look for a new EV to buy and will likely have
more choices at a lower price.
I hope you will have more choices. But given what I've seen the automakers
do in the past, I'm sorry to say that I'm not as confident as you are.
David Roden - Akron, Ohio, USA
EVDL Administrator
_______________________________________________
UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub
http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org
For EV drag racing discussion, please use NEDRA
(http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NEDRA)
