A smartphone on four wheels is the market mentality of electric-vehicle (EV) buyers, who overwhelmingly continue to lease rather than buy EVs.
Excluding Tesla, lease penetration in the EV market is 75 percent in 2015 (it was above 80 percent in 2013 and 2014). In 2011, leasing represented just 27 percent of the market. (Because Tesla does not use a traditional dealership model, its leasing data is not shared with auto industry trackers like Edmunds.com.)