MINI-E Lease Extension Details Forthcoming

The MINI-E trial lease participants all received emails today telling us that the details of the lease extension that we were told about would be emailed to us shortly. This is welcome news as many of us have been curious as to why we haven't been told anything other than we would be offered the opportunity to extend the lease. We only have 3 to 3 1/2 months left depending on when you picked up your car so we have been anxious to get some clarity on the details. Well, when I say details, I really mean cost. There has been a lot of speculation as to how much BMW will set the second year lease at. We are currently paying $850 per month for the car. Actually, we are really paying this high monthly payment to be part of something we believe in, but $850 ($932.88 w/tax in CA) is still a heck of a lot of money. I agreed to pay it because it was only for a year, no strings attached. Now that they are offering a second year I really have to think about how high I am wiling to go to keep the car.

There is a popular thought by many of the participants that somewhere in the $425 to $450/month range would be reasonable and I concur. The MINI-E Facebook page has an open discussion about it going on right now. There are a lot of really good people that have been driving these cars for eight months now and have done all that BMW has asked them to do. They love the cars and really want to keep them. I do hope we are rewarded for doing our part in helping to gather the information BMW was seeking in this experiment and the cost for the second year is reasonable. Most of the people I know in the program want to keep the cars as long as the cost isn't prohibitive.

We'll all know soon. Below is an excerpt of the email we received:

"The first email to keep an eye out for will come from campaigns@insiders.MINIUSA.com by no later than early March. We will announce details about the opportunity to re-lease the MINI E for a second year, from this email address. As previously mentioned, this offer will be extended to a number of Pioneers, but only to those who are able to respond because the announcement is not stuck in a junk mail folder – well that’s not actually part of the criteria, we just want to be sure you receive the email and have the chance to respond quickly."