If you last shopped for a car a few years ago, the math has shifted under your feet. Loan payments have hit a record high, lease deals look more competitive than ever, and one of the biggest reasons people leaned toward leasing EVs quietly disappeared last fall. Here’s what’s actually different this year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The average new-car loan payment reached $770 a month in 2026 \u2014 the highest it’s ever been. Compare that to the average new-car lease payment of $619 a month, and leasing starts to look pretty attractive on paper. Average used-car payments sit lower still, around $531 a month, if a used vehicle is on the table for you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Loan terms have stretched to match. The average new-car loan now runs just under 70 months \u2014 nearly six years \u2014 and more than a third of new-car loans stretch even longer than that. A longer loan lowers your monthly payment, but it also means you’ll likely be making payments on a car that’s already losing value fast, and you’re paying more total interest along the way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
New-car loans are averaging around 6.4% this year, and used-car loans are running notably higher, often well above 11%. If your credit isn’t in great shape, those used-car rates in particular can make financing expensive fast \u2014 which is exactly why we put together a guide on protecting your credit while shopping for financing<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For a while, leasing an EV had a quiet advantage: a federal tax credit that was hard to qualify for on a purchase could often be captured more easily through a lease, thanks to how commercial vehicle credits worked. That workaround effectively disappeared when the federal EV tax credit expired in September 2025. If you’re cross-shopping an EV this year, compare the lease and the loan on their own merits \u2014 not on a tax break that no longer applies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here’s one most buyers miss: lease contracts don’t quote an interest rate \u2014 they quote something called a “money factor,” a small decimal like 0.00292. To see what that actually translates to as an interest rate, multiply it by 2,400. A money factor of 0.00292 works out to roughly 7% \u2014 which might be higher<\/em> than the loan rate you could get on the same car. Dealers rarely volunteer this conversion, so it’s worth doing the math yourself before assuming a lease is automatically the cheaper financing option.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It still comes down to the same fundamentals we laid out on our lease vs. buy comparison<\/a>: how many miles you drive, how long you keep vehicles, and whether it’s for personal or business use. What’s changed in 2026 is the backdrop \u2014 record loan payments, a vanished EV tax trick, and lease deals that need their own math check before you trust the sticker number.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe EV tax credit trick is gone<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The lease math trick almost nobody checks<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
So which one actually makes sense?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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