As Ford Authority reported back in June, customers who opt to lease one of Ford’s EVs won’t be able to purchase those vehicles at the conclusion of their lease term – a common practice in the automotive world that’s only grown as used vehicle prices continue to rise. This change was “reportedly being made to support Ford’s efforts to lower battery production costs and go carbon neutral,” but The Blue Oval isn’t alone in that regard – in fact, Tesla stopped letting its lessees purchase their vehicles a few months prior to this decision. Now, yet another automaker has made this same change – Nissan – according to a dealer bulletin recently seen by CarsDirect.
Nissan actually discontinued its EV lease purchase option back on December 12th, a move that affects those leasing or planning to lease a Leaf or Ariya, the two all-electric vehicles currently on sale. The automaker later confirmed this change and noted that it’s being made for the same reasons Ford and others are going this particular route – to reduce battery supply chain costs while also helping lower vehicle costs for customers and protect the environment by recycling batteries.
“Nissan’s commitment to building sustainable and affordable Battery Electric Vehicles (BEVs) by creating technology to refabricate, recycle, resell, and reuse the EV batteries spans more than a decade,” said Nissan spokesperson Dan Passe. “The adjustment to our lease agreement marks the latest move toward our commitment to becoming carbon neutral by 2050 by creating second-life opportunities through our controlled disposal and harvesting process.”
Though lease buyouts are commonly available and have been for years, it seems as if that particular option may prove elusive for EV buyers moving forward, which is an important consideration for anyone thinking about holding onto one of those vehicles for the long term.
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Comments
“You will own nothing, and you will love it.” – Klaus Schwab
So if you lease an EV you cannot eventually buy it. But the other option would be to simply purchase the EV as you would any other car and own it. The Federal EV tax credit does not apply to leased vehicles unless the manufacturer chooses to factor it in to the customer’s final lease payment. Anyone who actually wants to acquire an EV based on the tax credit eligibility would want to be sure to specifically ask the dealer how that is factored in to a prospective lease. Otherwise a traditional purchase is the only option and that may be enough to sway someone away from an EV lease.
Hopefully auto recyclers (junk yards) are getting savvy with EVs and already have plans and processes in place for the recycling of EV batteries as decommissioned EVs start showing up to their wrecking yards. If the manufacturers solution to the growing concern is to prevent lease buyouts, and then harvest and recycle the batteries for all returned leases, that still doesn’t account for the traditional owned EVs. The recycling burden falls on the owners and the scrapyards.
We may eventually see a scenario where all EVs are lease only, even pre-owned EVs. You never actually own one. They remain the property of the manufacturer and you simply drive it for a few years and return it for reconditioning/recycling and lease another [or walk away.] If the EV is on the 2nd or 3rd owner and reaches the point where it is decommissioned, the manufacturer pulls the high voltage battery and then sends the rest of the vehicle to the scrapyard where it is either parted out or crushed.
Those old batteries will be valuable. Either repurposed for residential micro grid storage or directly for material recovery in a closed loop recycling process.
Didn’t Ford already say that the latter will be part of their big battery city in KY/TN?
I really doubt their claim is …”to reduce battery supply chain costs while also helping lower vehicle costs for customers and protect the environment by recycling batteries.” Supply chain costs are not within the auto industries purview to control, lowering vehicle costs is an outright fantasy, and when in anyone’s memory has the auto and petroleum industry really moved to protect the environment without being ‘pushed’? It only makes sense if a totally new industry emerges to achieve these lofty goals and that will not be any of the existing manufacturers… Ford included. It will come from the heavy hand of policy regulation and that is not feasible in the current times we live in I would suggest. It is a nice way of ‘not saying’ how dirty, costly, and expensive the whole BEV movement really is.
What nonsense did I just read? I swear I saw a kitchen sink in there.
If a rambling assemblage of words is good enough for Travis, then case closed!
Do these guys suffer from seasonal egg noggin syndrome?
I’m assuming – perhaps naively – that existing lease buyout options will still be honored? We have two leased Leafs, one of them an SV+, and have been planning to buy that one. Someone please tell me that manufacturers can’t rewrite existing, valid legal documents…?