Over three years and 12,000 miles a year, is leasing an EV cheaper than buying one?

$429 a month is what the billboard says. Over thirty-six months that is $15,444, and then the contract starts adding things. $3,000 due at signing. A $695 fee for the privilege of opening the account. A $395 fee at the end for the privilege of closing it.

Then the mileage. You are allowed 10,000 miles a year and you drive 12,000, so the difference is billed at $0.25 a mile: $1,500 across the term. That one is not a hidden fee, it is written plainly in the contract, and people are surprised by it anyway.

Add it up and the lease costs $22,434, not one dollar of which buys you any part of the car.

$42,490 for the car and $1,400 for the charger. $43,890, gone in an afternoon, which is roughly double what the lease asks for across the whole term.

If you do not have that money, this article is academic and you should lease. Cash flow is a real constraint and no table talks anybody out of it.

If you do have it, here is what happens in year three.

That is the entire argument.

You sell it, you pay $200 to do so, and the money comes back to you. The lease has no equivalent line, and that is not a hole in our model: you never owned anything, so there is nothing to sell.

$26,500 is bigger than the whole $22,434 the lease costs. Almost everything else on the two sides matches. Insurance is $6,630 either way. Charging is $1,373 at home and $899 in public, twice over. Tires, $960 and $960. The buyer pays for servicing and the lessee does not, and it barely moves anything.

$28,742 to buy. $32,296 to lease. $798 a month against $897.

Money is not the only axis here, and this page only measures money.

A lease keeps you in a newer car, under warranty for the whole term, with none of the used-market risk landing on you. That last part deserves more credit than it usually gets. The $26,500 above is an estimate. If used electric values fall off a cliff, the owner eats it and the lessee walks away whistling.

There is also the version where you exercise the purchase option at the end. Then you are buying a car in installments with $695 and $395 of fees bolted on, the resale value moves back to your side of the table, and the answer changes shape entirely. The calculator will run that one too.

But between these two contracts as written, with the cash in hand: buy it.