According to CarGurus, over 90% of vehicle shoppers believe that getting details about loan options before visiting the dealership is beneficial.
With the convenience of a 100% digital application process and EV Life’s expertise on electric vehicles, there are many reasons to follow this trend and complete your application before entering a dealership or ordering your vehicle.
Understand your payment. By getting approved prior to visiting a dealership, you will get a good idea of your monthly payment (given your planned down payment and approved rate) and can factor that into your budget decisions. Doing this prior to speaking with a salesperson will eliminate the in-person pressure of understanding complex numbers on the spot. It will also reduce the amount of time you need to spend at the dealership.
Improve your negotiating position. Getting approved prior to going to the dealership does not prevent you from also obtaining financing offers at the dealership. Having one already approved gives you a basis of comparison and can be used to push the dealer to find you a better rate. Did you know that dealerships can mark up a loan rate offer to collect extra money from the lender? Dealers are often incentivized to offer you the highest rate they think you will accept to get the most money from the lender.
Quick and no cost. Our prequalification takes less than 2 minutes to complete. Then, if you like the prequalification offer, the full application is only another 2 minutes. In less than five minutes and with no cost, you can have a loan available and ready for your vehicle purchase. This could save you hours at the dealership.
Understand your incentives. One of the benefits of financing with EV Life is that we help you understand and qualify you for eligible electric vehicle incentives. As part of our application process, we will highlight these incentives to make sure you are getting every penny and every perk available to you.
Post-purchase incentive support. Not only do we highlight all your available incentives, after you close a loan with EV Life you gain access to EV Navigator, our 'Turbo-Tax' style incentive support software that provides instructions on where and how to obtain your eligible incentives.
What about the impact to my credit score? As part of EV Life’s application process, we conduct a hard credit inquiry, which can impact your credit score. For this reason, we only recommend the full application if you are serious about purchasing a vehicle. If you are still exploring, you can always complete our prequalification to get a rate quote with no credit score impact. We will further note that the credit score impact of a hard inquiry (if there is any) is often very small and is temporary. Moreover, the credit agencies will lump inquiries together, understanding that most consumers will shop for the best rates. As long as your inquiries are close enough together, there may be no difference between one or more than one hard inquiry.
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