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Comment by birger | Hacker News Reader

Still they are quite popular here in The Netherlands. Dec 2024 almost 10.000 5-year lease contracts expired. There are lots of 2nd hand M3 for sale now, for about EUR 20.000 which is quite a good deal.

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This is the same in the UK. The market's absolutely flooding and they can be picked up for nothing.

Huge NHS and government leases of tens of thousands of vehicles.

Same goes for the Jaguar iPace. You can get 90,000GBP of car for like 35,000 with all the gadgets.

Even in essence brand new EVs are getting very significant discounts over there if you are not choosy. I wonder how the financing companies will be able to handle these if their guaranteed buyback prices need to hold. And they are underwater...

5 year lease cars are usually thrashed. They are the cheapest expensive option. Considering (in the Netherlands) who get those I'd stay far away from those.

They're getting more expensive to lease because their residual value is not nearly as high as leasing companies expected. They're about 20k because:

1. The local secondary market isn't really all the interested in ex-lease electric cars,

2. the usual sales channel of shipping ex-lease cars to Eastern Europe doesn't exist, there's barely a market for electric cars there.

So yeah, now's probably a good time to get a second hand electric car, but if you're leasing it's only going to get more expensive.

3. New EV models have come down in price significantly since 2018 and this drives down the price of a second hand one.

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