You can lease a Tesla Cybertruck for $1,249 a month, but

Tesla is advertising lease deals for the base Cybertruck that include a hefty down payment, or $1,249 with no deposit, for 36 months and 10,000 miles per year

Since its launch last December, everyone who owns a Tesla Cybertruck has been required to buy one. But this month Tesla opened up leasing options, giving fans of the angular pickup truck a chance to drive one for as low as $999 per month.

Those are the advertised figures for a three-year, 10,000-mile (16,000-km) lease agreement for the dual-motor model. But, as is often the case with these deals, the reality was less rosy. When you include the $7,500 down payment required at signing, the actual cost is approximately $1,180 per month (before taxes). Or, you can skip the upfront payment entirely and pay $1,249 per month, again before tax—which, let’s be clear, is the smarter move.

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We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: paying money on a lease is a bad move. In fact, this is one of the easiest mistakes to avoid when renting a car. The reasoning is very simple. The cash you hand over upfront? If your car is stolen or totaled, it will disappear faster than a donut in the break room. Why hand over thousands of dollars up front and risk losing it?

It’s not a small change by any means, but we can imagine the new offer will appeal to some people who previously thought they couldn’t afford to put a Cybertruck in their driveway.

This dual-motor truck is already quite nimble, with its 600-horsepower (608 hp) all-wheel-drive powertrain capable of sprinting to 60 mph (96 km/h) in 4.1 seconds. But if that’s not enough, there’s also a lease deal for the top-spec Cyberbeast, whose 834bhp (846hp) three-motor drivetrain can propel it to 60mph in 2.6 seconds.

Deposit the same $7,500, but check the Cyberbeast box on your order, and you’ll need to find $1,204 per month ($1,379 after factoring in the deposit). Or you can skip the down payment, but you’ll need to come up with $1,439 from each paycheck to avoid the repo guys. Shorten the lease term to 24 months and extend the annual mileage allowance to 15,000 (24,000 kilometers) and the monthly payments increase to nearly $1,800.

The Cyberbeast currently sells for $99,990 in cash or with a loan, with the dual motors listed for $79,990, more than double the $39,000 that Elon Musk promised Americans would be able to buy a Cybertuck a few years ago. An entry-level rear-wheel-drive truck is planned for launch next year, priced at just over $60,000.

But those prices and the lack of leasing options so far haven’t stopped the Cybertruck from posting some strong sales this year. Tesla sold 16,692 trucks in the third quarter, helping it surpass the Ford Mustang Mach-E to become the third-best-selling electric vehicle in the United States, behind the Model Y and Model 3. Ford sold just 7,162 F-150 Lightnings during the same period.

Is $999 a month (plus $7,500 down) a good deal to drive a Cybertruck? Leave a comment below and let us know what you think.