my car is worth WHAT?

really???
you think those letters and offers are real?
how old are you?
did you fall for the African lottery scam too?
if you didn't enter you didn't win!


they don't need to buy your car they made millions, yours is nothing special,
they don't really give you $5000 over trade in value for your used car, how would they make a profit?
nothing is free in the world and you will never out smart a dealership so use common sense..
(why anyone would drive 100 miles a day without a company provided car is beyond me, I hope you are making over $100,000 a year) when the lease is up you will either owe thousands for the high miles or be buying a car for top dollar that has little value due to the miles..

 

sounds just like the sleazy low ball offer of all times.............

 

any car you put 30,000 miles a year on is going to be worthless ..the prius holds its value, you are killing the value due to high miles...again, common sense..its you not the car or the dealer..at this rate you will have 100,000 miles on a 3 year old car..what do you think its going to be worth?

 

I suggest you click on beachbummm's name and then click on ignore. I just did that. That person's response is not indicative of the rest of us on Priuschat.

I commute over 100 miles a day and like you, chose the PiP, not for costs but for solo carpool access. I'm nearing 80k miles at year 3.

The letter you received is not a scam. It's standard advertising like the voiceover you hear waiting on hold. "Your business is valuable to us, please continue to hold." That voiceover doesn't mean your valuable and the dealer doesn't want your car. Its intent was to get you into the showroom which worked.

Your car may be one year old but it has 3 year's worth of mileage. That's how you look at it. Trade-in values are always low so figure you sell it on your own for $3k more. $17.5k for a Prius with 34k miles sounds like low depreciation assuming an after rebate cost of Around $26k

 

Prius won't hold value if the gas prices are low.


I am starting to see the advanced models in the the $18k - $19k range.

iPhone ?

 

i'll give you 15k schiffy!

 

we're all in the same boat. unless you were able to take advantage of the huge pip discounts being offered at a time when they weren't selling, the depreciation is unacceptable.

 

Halfway through my 0% loan. I still owe $16,400. Gotta love the 0 down. Yeah, 3 year old PiP with 80k is worth way less than that. That's what happens when you drive a lot.

 

I just pulled up 5 cars on truecar.com. They don't list any MY2014 but there is a 2012 with 34825 miles for $15995 so $14500 on a trade in doesn't seem out of line. EVs (except Tesla) and plug in hybrids have some pretty steep depreciation but excessive mileage will kill the value of any car.

 

My 2012 PIP lease is over next month. Went to dealer where I leased it two days ago (NJ) fully intending to buy the lease out. Only has 17,900 miles out of the 36,000 I was entitled to seeing as nobody in my family likes driving it. I had gone from a 2010 Prius III to the PIP back in 2012 and I LOVE driving it. Residual was $17,280 and adding in 7% NJ tax even at 5.9% interest with $5,000 down I calculated it to be around $310/mo for 48 month buyout. Dealer came up with $449/mo for 48 months which was crazy high so I laughed and went to the dealer I had leased the 2010 Prius from. Same numbers and they came up with $379/mo to buy it. I wasn't willing to go much higher than $310/mo for 3 year old car even with the low miles so ended up trading it in on a non PIP Model III like I had in 2010 for $248/mo (3 year lease). Really bummed out that I couldn't get a decent price on the PIP residual buyout but that's life I guess. Gonna hurt bad going back to less then 1 mile electric (if I stay under 24mph) after living on 10-13 full electric miles at almost any speed. And no heated seats is gonna hurt too once cold weather gets here. Any one have any idea why residual buyout could be so different from dealer to dealer? I thought the transaction was actually through TFS so the price should be the price with no real difference. I have a 2012 RAV4 lease that is up in 5 months and was considering buying that one also. If dealers can be that shady I will not even attempt buying it out!

 

It is a place you can ask questions. Of course you get a rude response from time to time, but in general the community is helpful. Ignore it.

But yea, that is really a lowball offer. Scummy, but not unexpected tactic for the likes of those dealers.

 

The residual is going to be the same. The variable is the interest rate the dealer uses. Never negotiate on the monthly payment. Know your credit score and at least have an idea what the interest rate your bank or credit union will charge.

 

Generally speaking, leasing is never going to be the cheapest way to roll a car.....but in your case you may also be fighting a few other disadvantages.
1. Gas is under $2 in most of the country.

2. Outside CA, where people use them to flout HOV laws, Pips aren't holding their value. You can get a new one for way less than $30,000 before the government kickbacks now.....or at least you still can for a little while. They stopped making the Pip a little bit ago, and the Prius is getting a re-boot to the G4, which means that 2015s are "last generation's leftovers."
So....$29,000 for a 0-mile 2015, or ???? for a 1.5 year old car with high mileage......

3. No offense, but the Pip is starting to get a little more competition from other PHEVs....and the more or less 10 mile range and limited EV-only speed is starting to look a little limited. Also BEVs are starting to come into the upper-middle class car buying range.

4. Even good dealers have to make a profit. I'm thinking that the street value for your car (2014, Michigan, base Pip, 34000 miles, perhaps in decent shape and with a good pedigree) is probably in the high teens. KBB says $19.6... so 19.0 seems fair for a private sale since nobody likes paying full bull on a car when they buy it. That's a private sale....like I said, dealers have to make a profit...and usually they'll leave a little haggle room on a used car pickup. Mostly, there's about a $1,500 to $2,000 difference for a $20,000 trade-in...so $17,000 seems to be a fair opening bid for them for a trade.

5. No offense again, but you're in Joisey. Nothing wrong with that per-se, it's a pretty state once you get away from the grey parts.....but you have this thing up there called Winter, which (I'm told) produces something that they call ice on the roads. They fight ice with many things that are not conducive to a car's good health (salt, sand, etc.) People also have these crazy long commutes to work on jam packed roads which sometimes leads to premature brake wear.
Pips are also a niche car. They don't sell them in all 50 states...but if I were going to buy one and I got to chose between somewhere in the sun belt and somewhere in the rust belt?
All things considered, I'm gonna pick the sun belt....but that's just me being me again.

Figure out what it's going to cost you to get out from under this lease deal and try to sell the car privately for pay off....or? Just drive it and pay it off.
The Pip may be a marginal PHEV, but it still gets fantastic gas mileage, and you've already paid both the hybrid and the lease premiums.
If you're going to continue to put 25,000 miles a year on your cars, then you need to drive them until they drop---especially if you haven't already paid for more trivial things like college funds, houses, retirement funds, etc.....


Good Luck!

 

Is it still way cheaper to lease with that many miles going on it? I do 120 miles a day, and didn't even consider leasing because I assumed buying that many miles in the lease contract would be prohibitively expensive.

 

^ Yeah... It's kinda interesting if you think about it.
Right now Pips are selling for $28.8 new in the box.
Usually, Toyota's fleece will give you 12K/yr, and if you keep the car absolutely in showroom condition and stay within those miles then you're taking what is arguably one of the cheapest cars to operate, and you're using arguably one of the most expensive financing tools to buy it with.

The good news is that in the next year or two there are going to be a LOT of off-fleece Pips in the used market very soon at fire sale prices.

It will make an interesting counter-argument to a G2 Volt purchase.

 

I drive 100 miles a day without a company provided car.
It's called commuting.
It's called having bought a house 16 years ago when I lived closer to work, but work moved us to a further away campus.
It's called not wanting to move to a denser populated area closer to work that is more expensive.
It's called, sadly, living in California.

On the other hand, I bought my car, because I knew I would be putting a lot of miles on it.