A little over a year ago, we decided to take an electric plunge. Our target, a 2019 Audi e-tron. The rumblings at LEASEHACKR and other forums were pointing to insane discounts on leftover, but still new, 2019 model year e-trons yielding some very attractive lease programs. Leases of the e-tron already received the $7,500 tax credit passed through to help reduce costs and Costco discounts at the time added at least another 10% off MSRP. All said and done, our $83,000 sticker price Audi e-tron Prestige came to a lease cost of roughly $56,000 and subsequent monthly payment of just over $600 a month. This was cheaper than our outgoing 2019 BMW X5 lease and also cheaper than a Tesla Model Y lease.
For more on why we chose the e-tron you can read our thoughts here and here.
We really enjoyed our e-tron over the past 14 months. It was exceedingly smooth and quiet, as luxurious as you would expect a modern luxury car to be and a comfortable size for a two-row SUV. The relatively short 204 mile range was never really an issue for our family. Audi just announced that there’s also a drivetrain software update they’ll be providing to our e-tron that will improve range. We haven’t take longer treks and almost all driving was done in and around town and day/overnight trips to local farms/wineries/breweries. Despite COVID, we were still able to rack up 12,000 miles.
Inside, the touches that come with the Prestige trim really do make a difference for the e-tron. Prestige added elements like a head-up display, soft closing doors, leather trimming on the instrument panel, upgraded leather on the massaging front seats, sunshades on the rear doors and enhanced ambient lightning. Really, I think this should all be standard fare for an Audi interior, except maybe the massaging seat and soft closing doors. E-tron Prestige is truly a full luxury Audi model that happens to be an electric car. And that might not sound like a great endorsement, but I think for a lot of people, something like the e-tron is going to make taking the plunge to electric that much easier. Everything just works as a normal luxury vehicle should. I suppose that might remove something “special” about the EV experience, but I think it’s nice that it doesn’t resort to gimmicky fart noises or the like.
While the Prestige was available on our e-tron for the 2019 model year, for the 2022 model, it looks like it’s only available on the new e-tron S.
Looking back at our initial likes/dislikes most of those held true to the end our of e-tronning. Our e-tron continued to be wonderfully smooth and quiet. The seamless electric acceleration has won us over, likely for good, for at least one main family car in our stable from here on out. Even the best of automatic transmissions or dual clutches can’t match the lovely swell of power that an EV provides. It is well-suited as part of a luxury experience. Would easily rank the e-tron as one of the best luxury EV’s to date, although we’re now starting to see a lot of impressive vehicles like the Mercedes-Benz EQS, Lucid Air, Porsche Taycan and Audi’s own e-tron GT, albeit at generally higher price points.
I still wish Audi would provide driver selections for things like a one-pedal driving mode and roll/creep functionality. I know that the coasting nature built into the e-tron does make it much more of a “normal” driving experience and readily appreciate that on certain roads and driving situations, but it seems like this should be a simple programmable software application, as on many other competitive models. While the e-tron was smooth, it came with a hefty cost in terms of weight. Yes the weight is “down low” with the batteries, but at nearly 6,000 pounds, the e-tron is far from nimble, and also is somewhat of an “electron hog” when it comes to electrical efficiency. The Volkswagen ID.4 we recently sampled felt much more nimble in this regard. ID.4 is a bit smaller on the outside, but uses its footprint well, where it doesn’t seem like a huge deduction in interior space. This should bode well for the upcoming Audi Q4 e-tron model.
Issues encountered: The dealer was able to address one squeaky brake issue through a service bulletin I identified and brought to their attention. Brakes would squeal persistently at any low speed driving as you come to a halt. Terrible for pulling in and out of your garage, as well as having to pull up anywhere. Initially the dealer tried to tell me that it was due to the lack of brake usage with the regenerative system, but that wasn’t the case. We did have to revisit the dealer twice before they finally agreed to go through with the procedure on the bulletin. Other than that, we did have a couple sporadic occurrences of the infotainment system not displaying the backup and parking cameras when we initially shifted to reverse. It wasn’t repeatable however and happened less than a handful of times over the 12,000 miles.
Similar to our MinnyVan Carbitrage, it has been interesting to watch the trade-in values on the e-tron. Including our semi-distressed merchandise opportunity, the e-tron hasn’t really been a hot-seller. Audi introduced a Sportback version for the 2020 model year and continued to make small updates here and there. The biggest news has been the launch of the e-tron GT based on the Porsche Taycan and the upcoming Q4 e-tron, which more squarely targets the previously mentioned Model Y. Whenever I had checked market values on our e-tron, most values pegged it in the mid to high $40,000 range, maybe low $50,000 range at best. If we had wanted to jump out of the lease, we could possibly squeak by with little to no money out of pocket, but that was it.
Then came the Great Car Shortage of 2021.
Somehow, the e-tron value began to rise. As dealers simply started to run out of new vehicles, they started to get a hankering for lightly used cars, which could placate shoppers coming in. Our values started to climb in to the mid $50,000 range. Sure, we could likely sell/trade our e-tron, but there wasn’t really anything that piqued our interest as something we’d replace it with. And deals were hard to come by on the new side for pretty much anything. So while we could maybe cash out some value on the e-tron, we’d likely be shoving it right back into whatever we end up replacing it with.
The market value would not be stopped however. A quick check on Carvana a month or so ago yielded an offer of just under $60,000. We had now crested the initial purchase/lease price on our e-tron that we got a year and 12,000 miles ago! Could we sell? Should we? Hmmmm. One hurdle that more and more lease customers are facing these days are limitations from their banks (usually tied to the automaker) on who can buyout a lease. The end customer (us) can almost always buy out the lease directly, that’s not a problem. The challenge comes if you’re trying to trade out to another dealer, say, like Carvana. As dealers are scrambling for any and all inventory, one way that the automaker’s captive bank can help its own dealer set is to make sure that their dealers get first crack at any off-lease vehicles. Many captive banks now require that you work through one of their dealers first if you’re trying to end your lease without buying it yourself.
$60,000 seemed enticing, but seeing some used listings (also super low inventory) it looked like there could potentially be even more value to be had with our well-equipped and lightly used e-tron. I messaged our local Audi dealer and arranged for a time to bring our car in for an appraisal. A quick response from the dealer was an offer of $65,000! That was nearly $10,000 over our lease cost and way above our buyout amount from Audi Financial. If we decided to go forward, we’d be getting a pretty big check from the dealer. The payout would more than cover even the year’s worth of payments we had made PLUS a profit of over $10,000. Amazing to see a once distressed inventory product command a huge market value swing.
With that flip now complete, it was now time to decide if we could find something that we’d like as a replacement that wasn’t over-inflated due to the market conditions we were in…
