@Cortana for your peace of mind, I’ve plugged in the most recent numbers into my Tesla financing comparison tool.
With the following parameters:
The red/green cells are one-off transfers (downpayment, purchase, sale).
The value in bold shows the present value of each option, given all the assumptions. Two big factors changing the result are:
- your personal discount rate - if you put it very low, like 3%, it’s better to pay with cash
- your perceived utility - it’s net of all other costs like fuel, insurance etc
The utility has to be high enough for the present value to be positive. Otherwise the whole deal makes no sense (you’re losing “value” on it).