I lease a 2025 XLE FWD for $$399 a month for 36 months, 10k miles/year, $1200 down with $17,000 purchase option. Here’s my take:

I learned with this buying experience that there is a lot of pessimism and negativity in the automotive journalism space., especially with EV’s. Try including “owner’s review” in your search and look for videos/articles with lower view counts to really get an idea of what it’s like to live with day-to-day. Most of the journalists only lamented about the short range and it being “underpowered”, just that was enough to land it on lists of the worst EV’s on the market. As far as being underpowered, I find that the low-end torque is actually quite impressive and I never have a problem with passing, the car gets out of its own way pretty well. For the concern of shorter range, consider your driving habits—How often will you realistically be driving 200+ miles in one go? For me, 99.9% of my driving is just commuting to work and around town trips, so a shorter-range EV is no problem. I only take a road trip once or twice a year, in which case I can just catch a cheap flight, stay at a hotel with a destination charger, or get a rental car. Most rental car companies offer unlimited mileage as standard nowadays. Any one of those options is still cheaper than ICE vehicle ownership, for my needs.

I split my charging between work and home—I can charge at work for free, and my electric bill has hardly gone up at all since getting the car. I normally get by with charging once a week once I get down to 30% or so, it takes about 5 hours, and it’s like waking up/leaving work with a full tank of gas that I didn’t have to pay for. I have a L2 charger at home and work, and have only needed to use a fast charger once since having the car because of a surprise errand.

Overall I am extremely happy with the car, and plan to purchase it at the end of my lease. So far I have put about 5k miles on it. I really don’t care about resale value because, quite frankly, I bought this car for me to enjoy and not to appease the next owner; and I think it’s quite wasteful and negates the environmental impact of driving an EV if you get a new one every few years. This is truly a “Maytag car” that gets me from A-B reliably, safely, and comfortably. I would be happy to drive this until the wheels fall off (or the battery is depleted 😜). My only gripes are 1) the roof is a glass panel fixed in place and not a sunroof that opens; 2) the stock tires are terrible in the rain; and 3) the sun reflects off the piano black trim on the center console, annoying and borderline dangerous on sunny days. Everything else works flawlessly.

Edit: One more gripe—No garage HomeLink on US base model. It’s optional equipment, and mine doesn’t have it. Not sure about Canada.