MaGiKRat43

Hello 👋

I am not a Lexus owner, though I did lease an IS 350 in 2011 for three years. I have been leasing for the past two years a Hyundai Santa Fe Phev, which has been very good for what it was when I got it. Two years ago, outright committing to a BEV would have been hard for us without the experience we've gained over the last two years, so while my family has always been interested in EVS, two years ago, it didn't seem right to pull the trigger. So now, with our lease up next year, I have been researching and test driving the evs on the market for the last two months. I've seen every dual-motor EV except for Ford, BMW, Audi, Mercedes, Tesla (ew), and all the exotic brands, so I feel confident in saying as great as the Santa fe phev I'm leasing has been, virtually any of the evs I've driven would be a step up in terms of comfort and enjoyment both. So I have no real dog in the fight, save for money. We have the charging stuff taken care of at home, and we rarely travel more than 100 miles both ways. My metric was, can the car get us to albany and back on one charge, but that seems less and less necessary in my life.

When I drove the RZ briefly back in May, I enjoyed it, don't get me wrong, but I wasn't exactly wowed either. What did wow me was the lengths the dealer seemed willing to go to get us out of our current lease a year early and into an RZ, including giving a loner car for 30 days for the lease duration should we need it. We were not planning on doing this, but honestly, if the money comes out to be the same or cheaper than the likes of, say, an Ioniq 5 or a Chevy Equinox EV, both of which i liked a lot, then we'd be fully willing to do so. The dealership indicated they didn't think it would fold too much into the payments for an RZ, but with a full 12 months to go on the lease, I can't see there being a way that we can keep things under $600 doing that this early. This would be 36/12,000 with $5,000 down, btw.

So I suppose my questions are:

Does it seem like it is possible to lease an RZ after they buy out the Santa Fe lease, all for $600 or below?

And

Is it the honest opinion of those who know Lexus best that the range concerns aside, the car is quiet, comfortable, and even worth getting it off this lease early for in the first place?

I appreciate the help. Thank you.

afadeev

That is their job!

Generally speaking, if you want to get out of the lease, you need to try to offload it to someone on sites like swapalease.com or similar.

That has nothing to do with the dealer - that's a national Lexus program in which ~50% of the dealers participate. Not just yours.

Taking advantage of this benefit is something else altogether.
Most dealers don't participate in the "program", those who do don't have enough "loaner" vehicles in stock. The few who participate and have vehicle is stock, can't "loan" them out to you unless you arrange everything through the app, which may, or may not work for you (it currently errors out for me 100% of the time).

I have no idea what you mean by "buy out Santa Fe lease". Ask them exactly what that means, and then we could help you.
If you mean having the dealer take over the lease payments on your old car, then that will cost you. Take the # of remaining lease payments, multiple by the remaining # of months, and you will know exactly how much it will cost you.

With $5K down and no other complications, you should be able to get your lease payments <$300, but may need to shop across multiple dealers.

I've added RZ to my garage next to a Tesla Model 3 Performance.
RZ is better than Tesla in luxury, comfort, build quality, and quietness.
it is inferior to Tesla in range, acceleration, and overall performance.

Besides the vehicle itself, Lexus software inside and outside (app, web site) the vehicle are somewhere between second-rate and outright dysfunctional.
After three (3) calls to Lexus customer service (got dropped the 2nd time), the app still errors out while attempting to arrange a "loaner" vehicle per that 30-day program. Lexus Financial account creation also errors out.
Inside the car, managing profiles and getting seats and mirrors to adjust to each driver based on the phone in the driver's seat is not happening. Some configuration settings are whimsically disabled while you are driving, others are available. It's a bit of an all-around ***** show on the software side of Lexus. The hardware side is solid.

The current deals from Lexus are extremely attractive, so we picked up the RZ due to attractive lease pricing.

HTH,
a