Hey guys, I've been doing a lot of fumbling around with researching this move, and I'm hoping to have a sanity check on my numbers. Very open to other/better options if I'm totally missing something.
Current cars:
2001 Volvo V70 with 208k miles
2010 Hyundai Accent with 132k miles
The Volvo has been our "big car" for about five years, but with our needs and with the general lack of station wagons these days (booo), a minivan feels like the logical successor. And it's getting to be time. Some deferred bigger maintenance items have piled up, it needs a timing belt soon, and there are a few other expensive repairs it could use (AC). Basically we either need to throw a bunch of money/time into it to keep it going, or move on, and at 208k it's getting harder to want to throw a bunch of money at it.
Minivans are more expensive in general than other cars I've looked at in the past, though also right now the used car market in general has gone a bit bananas. It looks like we can get a 2012-ish Kia Sedona with 120k-ish miles for around six grand. Toyota Siennas are more, but not as much more as I thought. As someone that hasn't ever paid more than $2500 for a car (the Accent two years ago), six grand sounds scary, but it feels like the optimal bang/buck ratio there.
On the EV side of things, it seems like with the current weirdly-good lease deals out there, it's hard to lose going that route. A 2020 Bolt pencils out to about $0.24/mile all-in for 36 months and 45,000 miles. With adding in an estimated $0.03/mile for electricity, that's basically the total cost of driving my Accent when accounting for gas, maintenance, and repairs, presuming an EV won't need any of that at all in three years. The range of a current Bolt (259 miles) seems just about perfect for our use case. And if it's not enough for something, the minivan would be a fallback. Most longer trips would be in the minivan for other reasons anyway. A used 2017 Bolt can be found for around $15k, but that seems to pencil out to a worse deal than a new lease with the deals going right now. Other EVs for the most part feel either too low a range (first gen Leaf) or bonkers expensive (Tesla etc.). Seems like the Bolt is the sweet spot right now.
With selling both current cars after buying a minivan and leasing an EV, we'd only be tying up a few grand more in our cars after the dust settles.
Am I missing anything?