Buying vs. Leasing
Once settled in Germany, one of the major questions that comes in a person’s mind is whether to buy a car or lease one?
Buying
Buying involves making a considerable downpayment followed by a EMIs from a car loan (Autokredit) and additionally the insurance amount (Autoversicherung). Other than this, there would be other car related costs like taxes, maintenance costs, TüV Check costs and so on. At the end of loan closure, naturally the person would be owning the car. For someone who prefers to keep the car for a long time(more than 5 years), owning might prove beneficial as eventually owning keeps on getting cheaper with reducing yearly insurance costs( owing to increasing SF class - Schadenfreiheitsclass .
Leasing
In case of leasing, the person would “own” the car for a fixed period, usually 2 years, and return the car after 2 years. Costs similar to owning a car may be expected, however, the advantage with leasing is, one gets to use a new car, with newer features, every two years and also the flexibility in deciding the monthly costs. Leasing a car also gives you an option of switching to an electric car, say after 2 years, if charging infrastructure has improved and charging costs have reduced. Someone wishing to change car often could benefit from leasing.
Here are few other pointers:
Governmental policies w.r.t electric cars and reducing fossil fuel vehicles
In today’s times, more push seems to be on using electric or hybrid vehicles. So much so, that the government is giving subsidies on buying electric vehicles as well as on hybrid vehicles! The subsidy is up to 6000€ for electric vehicles and up to 4500€ for hybrid vehicles. (Details)
Restriction of certain classes of Diesel vehicles in certain regions
Costs of ownership of cars
Generally one could do the math by comparing cost of ownership for say a 2 year period or a 5 year period and decide if owning would be better or leasing.
Electric/Hybrid cars vs. Fossil fuel cars
This decision should be based on
Availability of Chargers in the immediate vicinity: Charging is a time consuming process and hence having a charger at walking distance or better, in your accommodation parking makes absolute sense.
Charging costs: Some charging stations bill you by the minute, some levy a monthly usage cost. Apart from this, there would be a per kW electricity charge as well. It might cost more to pure electric/hybrid compared to say gasoline, although it is environment friendly.
Government subsidy: Given the government subsidy, going for a hybrid and later on using it as a Gasoline vehicle might make sense. The subsidy is applicable to leasing too!
Charging cable cost: Faster the charging capacity of the cable, more the cost! Although one time, it is still a considerable amount! See link(8).
Comments