> leasing avoids eating the entire depreciation in value

Assuming the bank's predictions are correct, that's not true. The lease agreement simply predicts a specific residual value and you pay the difference between that and the purchase price (in other words, the full predicted depreciation amount) in your payments. Of course, the less you drive the leased car compared to your mileage allowance, the worse you do, since the residual value prediction assumes you used all 10k miles a year or whatever.

Not saying leasing is bad, just that the opportunity for them to be a better deal strictly financially depends mostly on whether the bank overestimates the residual value (as I suspect happened with my off-lease used EV, which cost me less than half the sticker price, with 16k miles, at 3 years old).

My observation is that the manufacturers (who are originating the majority of leases) are intentionally eating the depreciation and going with unrealistically high residuals in order to make the leases more attractive. Just another way of structuring an incentive to move cars off the lot.