New Nissan Leaf gets a lease program starting at $229 per month

As we often reported before, the new Nissan Leaf doesn’t compete in many ways against Tesla’s Model 3 and GM’s Chevy Bolt EV when it comes to features and capacity, but it still has pricing on its side.

Now the next generation version of Nissan’s all-electric receives a lease program as it starts hitting the dealerships – becoming one of the cheapest options to go electric.

Leases have been very popular for electric vehicles in the US since customers don’t have to worry about the federal tax credit. The lessor takes the tax credit and generally applies it to the money down payment or to lower the monthly payment on the vehicle.

For the Chevy Bolt EV, it resulted in a ‘nationwide’ lease program for $329 and $3,809 due at signing.

Better deals were found in some states, which resulted in some of the cheapest options to go electric. You can always check with your local dealers for inventory and see if you can find a deal.

But now Nissan is trying to beat that with the next generation Leaf.

The company unveiled its lease contract last week and the base version, which starts at $30,000 to buy before incentives, comes with those terms:

• $229 per month for 36 months
• $3,979 due at signing
• 12,000 miles per year

What they did here is significantly increase the amount at signing in order to keep the monthly payment equal to the 2017 Leaf.

They often update lease terms and Nissan says those terms are good until 02/05/2018. You can check with your local Nissan dealer for Leaf inventory.

Electrek’s Take 

It’s definitely not cheap at face value with the increase in cash down, but it could still be one of the cheapest way out there to get into electric cars, especially for a vehicle with a range of 151 miles on a single charge.

With this said, I would also note that the base version doesn’t come with fast-charging and it’s a $1,500 option. I think most people will want that option, which should increase the monthly payments on the lease.

For those who can’t afford the Tesla Model 3, which is more expensive and doesn’t have a lease option at the moment, or even the Chevy Bolt EV, which can be a little more expensive, it can be worth looking into.

Along with the Hyundai Ioniq Electric, I think they are the best and cheapest options to go electric with a new car on a budget. After accounting for gas savings, those monthly payments can start to become attractive.