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Like the GM EV1, Volkswagen is planning a lease program from their XL1. While VW hasn’t announced pricing, the idea behind leasing is for VW to maintain a measure of control over the cars, specifically to ensure they’re located close to proper servicing centers and to avoid a secondary market for the cars. VW’s Mark Gillies confirmed to Autoblog that the lease program is the most likely avenue for customers to obtain an XL1.
16 Comments on “Volkswagen Looking To Lease The XL1...”
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The people who could afford this car are not worried about the price of gasoline. Probably better than a Prius for arriving at Cannes, or the Oscars. Getting out of the damned thing will allow paparazzi to grab some nice shots of Eva Longoria going commando style down south, so that could either be a plus or a minus depending upon your take on the tabloids. Finally, does a car with explosive door bolts have to undergo some sort of extra EPA or Homeland Security certification? Weird.
Diesel, not Gasoline.
We must speak by the card or equivocation will undo us…
Explosive door bolts?
Man no way are you gonna get into SF, Chicago, NYC or Wash DC….
Exactly! Just like all these cars with multiple airbags that need to stay out of these cities.
Just looked under the hood of a Jag F Type the other day. That thing has explosive hood latches in the form of some kind of airbags. Undoubtedly some kind of pedestrian safety scheme.
doesnt the SLS AMG have those for its gullwing doors?
yup, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercedes-Benz_SLS_AMG#Safety
and im pretty sure the gas in the car is much more destructive explosively, than just a handful of bolts..
Gee, wonder if they’re keeping them on leases so they can crush them, a la the GM electric car.
I hope Volksy has worked out how to avoid the decades of bad press, movies and conspiracy theories associated with GM not allowing their users of EV1s to keep them.
VW will every one of them when the leases are up. They won’t want to support a service program for a fleet of 250 special cars.
I expect they will hang on to at least 2, for the museum.
“VW will every one of them” should read “VW will crush every one of them”.
And yes, certainly they’ll save a couple for the museum.
This might at first be seen as a car for wealthy yuppie/hippie, champagne-socialist types, but there’s a lot more of the future in this car than we realize.
Even the Toyota Prius, in some markets, was sold as lease only to begin with so it’s not completely strange that VW would choose to go the lease route. It protects both the manufacture and the customer, if you think about it.
Shades of the GM Impact, where they’ll come and take the car you love away no matter how much money you offer them.
I take it as a sign of bad faith that they won;t let you actually own it. That keeps Jay Leno from getting one too, as he’s an owner not a lessee.
If GM was just upfront about the cars being just test marketed vehicles under lease then the whole EV-1 debacle would have never occured. People had the impression that these cars were to be mass produced one day and they’d eventually be for sale, but GM probably knew the whole time that it was just an test vehicle to judge consumer response, or a marketing gimmick. Most people don’t realise alot of the work on the GM Impact was done by the company AeroVironment.
Chrysler did the same thing with the turbine car, but they only let people borrow them, not lease them.
I can see Jay Leno with one of these cars, if not personally owning one, at least doing a Jay Leno’s Garage video story on it and test driving it.