Toyota's Already Offering a Huge 2024 bZ4X Lease Discount in New York
Toyota, a noted EV skeptic, finally delivered the bZ4X crossover in 2023. Despite it only having been on sale for one year, the automaker is already offering discounts on the new 2024 model, cutting $10,000 off the top for lease clients in New York.
Despite only releasing pricing for the EV in January, CarsDirect reported that Toyota’s lease deal cuts monthly lease payments down to $299 per month for a 36-month lease with $3,999 down. As these things tend to go, there’s a strict limit of 10,000 miles per year, but that’s still not a bad deal for a $47,734 EV.
Even with that healthy discount, the bZ4X is more expensive than more compelling options in its segment. The Tesla Model Y, the best-selling EV in the world, is now more affordable than ever as the automaker looks to clear existing inventory with deep discounts. It’s also eligible for federal tax credits, which makes it an even more compelling option.
Toyota’s foot-dragging on EVs caused a stir at first, but its logic is looking wiser by the day. EV demand is growing slower than automakers had hoped, given their significant investments in production, research, and development. Ford recently announced that it would pause development of its new electric SUV and pickup truck to focus on hybrid offerings, and General Motors made a similar announcement a few months back.
[Image: Toyota]
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Chris grew up in, under, and around cars, but took the long way around to becoming an automotive writer. After a career in technology consulting and a trip through business school, Chris began writing about the automotive industry as a way to reconnect with his passion and get behind the wheel of a new car every week. He focuses on taking complex industry stories and making them digestible by any reader. Just don’t expect him to stay away from high-mileage Porsches.
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Of all of the EVs out there, this one has to wrestle the "I guess we have to build this turd..." crown from the never-seen Mazda MX-30. Duke said it above - this is a compliance vehicle, nothing more, nothing less. It's like they gathered up the Toyota interns, gave them a project with the only goal of "make us an EV that no one will care about" and this is what got squeezed out. In the past year, after almost 20,000 miles of driving, I've seen one of these on the road, and this area is thick on the ground with Toyotas given that many of their suppliers are around here. It reeks of so little caring like Toyota wanted to show that EVs don't have a market or future - if the mighty Toyota can't sell them, who can? kind of attitude.
Make an EV RAV-4 and watch those sell. This one is just too far out there to be successful.
"Don't I have the right to do what I want with my own money? ...
"So the last will be first, and the first will be last." Matthew 20:15-16
I used to watch 'BZ-4 in Boston in the 1960s. WBZ had the best weathermen, their farm report always gave the price of butternut squash, and for a time they carried the Red Sox. Apparently this is not the topic at hand. Honestly, I've never heard of this model until now. That might be one reason they're discounting it?
$299 for the car, but how much is gasoline?
If one of our ancient ICE vehicles calls it quits (a couple of them have issued threats recently, and even conspired to have some overlap in sick bay), a lease could give me a low-commitment bridge to the future.
Earlier this week when my spouse's mechanic was also her taxi driver (only for two days, I ain't super reliable on the pickup times and this isn't your storybook 1950s one-vehicle household), we stopped by cargurus.com. Higher-than-modern-sedan-ride-height is stated customer preference (my personal thanks again to ArtCenter and 'stylists' everywhere for killing the car, this is sarcasm), so we are restricted to CUVs. How many used CUVs do we find of the electric flavor? Not so many (and the brands are weird).
So we de-select 'Electric' fuel type and click the 'Hybrid' box still in the CUV category. Well if you tell me I am going to own a hybrid long-term, there is sort of only one company right now that I want to consider for that hybrid and wow those newer RAV4s look pretty nice don't they! But I'd really rather not spend that much in a panic, so let's table this discussion for now.
So yes, I usually am not a leasing guy, but if the circumstances were right and the price were really right, maybe just maybe lease one of them EV oddities with the overdone styling as a bridge to a more enlightened future (would buy me a couple of years and save on my cash outlay).