Electric vehicles are a tough sell now though. The Chevy Bolt EV has a 60 kWh Lithium-ion battery; to charge that fully costs $8.7 in Utah (14.5 cents per kWh). Per the EPA's measure that gets you 238 miles.
Gas costs approx $2.24/gallon in Utah. A Prius has a 11.3 gallon tank and a 540 miles range (again, EPA standard). That means that $11.15 would get you the same distance as a full Bolt EV charge in gas.
Now, before electric vehicle fans jump for joy at the $2.45 saving per 238 miles, we also have to account for the cost of the two vehicles. The Bolt EV costs $36,620, the Prius $23,475.
Therefore for the Bolt EV to make economic sense you have to drive 1,276,942 miles. Or fuel has to get much more expensive, or electricity much cheaper. Regardless, the economics don't add up at all when compared with hybrid gas vehicles.
Yes, I know, lower maintenance, but not $13K lower. And before you talk to me about the cost of driving to and from a gas station, let me remind you about battery loss due to cold temperatures (this is Utah we're talking about, after all).
In general people buying electric vehicles in 2017 are buying them for non-economic reasons. They lose money. Hybrids are likely the best bang for your buck, and may remain that way even after Tesla ship their $36K competitor (since no other major metric in the equation changes, electricity is still very expensive, and gas very cheap).
Economics is only a single factor though. Part of the decision for me was that zippy-peppy driving, it's mad fun. I haven't driven a Prius, but I don't get the impression it's so much fun to operate.
Also, I hate stopping at gas stations, not just for the monetary cost, but for the time and general annoyance. Now I just plug in every night, my car is always ready to go. I'm never rushing off to an appointment only to realize that my tank is nearly empty, which will make me late. And I never have to change the oil.
And now I can make my weekly ~140 mile round trips without feeling so much polluter's guilt. Sure, it's a drop in the bucket, but a full bucket is full of drops.
Did you take into account that these cars can be programmed to wait until nighttime to start charging, when rates are lowest?
Anyway, sure, economics is a big factor that will slow adoption, but it won't halt it.
Edit to add: Plus I get $9,000 in total tax rebates. Tasty.
Well yeah, you kind of do need to change the oil if you don't want the gearbox to die an early death. There's also still coolant that needs to be changed regularly as well. EVs have significantly less maintenance, but there's still critical maintenance that must be done on time if you don't want to damage your car.
It calls for tire rotations every 7,500 miles - not a lot you can do about that, and I suspect tire wear will be worse in a torque-happy EV. Skipping them will only reduce your traction, which I suppose could damage you and your car. And of course you have "required services" like brake pads when those wear out and start to squeal; probably less common due to regenerative braking from the electric motor: Engine braking is a habit that takes work with an ICE, but it's the norm in an EV. And you might want to change the cabin air filter when it gets dusty - not that my vehicles haven't gone...a long time...without cabin air filter changes. Skipping them won't damage your car, just your nose. But fluid flushes? Hardly necessary.
Coolant only needs to be changed at 150,000 miles - hardly "regularly". Most ICE cars don't need changes at less than 100,000 mile intervals. In an EV like the Bolt, coolant deals with a lot less heat than an ICE and doesn't suffer microscopic contamination from hot exhaust gasses and oil.
And the Bolt doesn't have a transmission; it's direct drive. Gearboxes (I assume you mean manual transmissions?) typically take synthetic gear lube now with recommended intervals of 200,000 to 300,000 miles. Differentials use the same stuff. I did elect to change the differential fluid in my Jeep at 250,000 miles - but those diffs are taking a lot more abuse than a typical car.
To be fair, I didn't know that the coolant in a Bolt is supposed to be good for 150,000 miles, that's a good bit longer than I figured. I was thinking closer to 90,000 miles, but you're right, the lower service temperature and also less metal surface area will make it last longer in an EV. But in an ICE, exhaust and oil should not be getting into the coolant at all. If it is, any long life coolant is going to need to be changed out immediately while your head gasket is replaced to fix the oil/exhaust leak. One of the major reasons why coolant has a service life is because of corrosion inhibitors present in it that get used up over time.
You're also right that brake pads are going to last longer, on an EV, they barely wear at all. However, there's the brake fluid that will wear out just as fast as on any car. Over time brake fluid picks up humidity, there's no easy way around this. It'll cause the car to potentially lose the brakes if ignored long enough or even rust out brake lines.
Then there's still every single suspension component that a traditional car has. Balljoints and tie rod ends are always going to wear. If you're lucky, your manufacturer might have chosen components with built in grease fittings so that with regular maintenance you can extend the lifespan of those components but that's the exception, not the rule. There's still bearings, shock absorbers, CV joints, motor mounts, and bushings on various things. Every one of those has a finite service life, just because Chevy doesn't list a recommended interval to replace them doesn't mean that they don't need to be inspected and replaced as they wear down.
As for the actual oil comment though, the Bolt isn't direct drive, it has a fixed ratio gearbox with a differential built in. It only has a couple of gears and the differential, but still, they're helical gears and they need the right viscosity oil. Over time, those gears are going to degrade the oil from the shear forces and add contaminants to it. Contaminants are also slowly going to seep in from the vent, you can't completely seal up a gearbox, you need to have a vent on it otherwise running it is going to push oil out of the seals around the axles. As for the recommended intervals you quoted, that's pretty unrealistics and most manufacturers aren't recommending crazy intervals like that.
It doesn't have that high of a service interval but for something like a 2015 Honda Civic it's still just using their regular long life coolant which is supposed to be good for 5 years or 60,000 miles. Brake fluid is something that's pretty much always going to last around 3 to 5 years regardless of manufacturer. And manual transmissions typically have a much more reasonable recommended fluid life of somewhere around 90,000 to 120,000 miles. Some manufacturers are listing some transmissions as having "lifetime" fluid, but there's also identical transmissions with the same fluid in other vehicles where the recommendation is 90 to 120 thousand miles. There's no such thing as "lifetime fluid", every single fluid in any vehicle wears down in use and picks up contaminants, eventually every fluid will need to be replaced. Any manufacturer who tells you otherwise is lying to you.
Do you have a source for some of your claims? Honestly the recommended change interval of 200,000 to 300,000 is higher than I've ever seen and even on stuff like a 2015 VW Jetta you're supposed to change the manual transmission fluid every 40,000 miles. Here's the 2014 Jeep Wrangler service interval for the manual transmission and transfer case: http://www.wranglerforum.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=198...
250,000 miles is much too long for a differential, I'd imagine the drain plug was probably coated in metallic sludge right? I've seen a few drain plugs out of differentials and transmissions that were all treated way better and still be coated in what used to be the gears.
I think you're confusing service interval items that are "check/verify" with "need to do". I'm almost positive you don't need to check or change anything that extensively on a manual transmission VW.
Also, we figured out a long time ago that sealed transmissions are okay, but it all boils down to how you drive the vehicle. Yeah, if you treat the car like shit, or you get the transmission checked (if this is even possible these days), if it's low then there's something wrong & you'll need to add fluid, or drain & fill. Otherwise? You don't touch it & it's fine. Volkswagens last a solid 200-300k miles before you actually need to do something major, but that's subjective.
Yes, there's all these wonderful suspension components, but I imagine with Tesla vehicles, those components are most likely heavier duty than a regular vehicle, given all the fucking obnoxious batteries. They also probably wear a lot differently & components will fail differently than they will & at different rates compared to a traditional ICE vehicle.
No the 40,000 miles really is for replacement. That being said it does sound pretty low and it is for their fancy dual clutch direct shift transmission. But sealed transmissions with "lifetime" fluid wear out faster than a decent transmission. There isn't some major transmission improvement that allows for a sealed transmission, it's just a regular transmission that you can't perform maintenance on.
As for whether or not it's strictly necessary, you can avoid oil changes altogether and a decent car will make it quite a long way before it seizes up.
You can do the same with a transmission or a differential, but they'll last a lot longer if you replace the contaminated and worn out fluid with new fluid.
But even just checking the fluid level in a transmission or differential, if the fluid is low, you can't ever just refill it. It didn't burn up, you've got a leak and it'll probably just get worse if you ignore it. There are plenty of vehicles out there with absolutely ludicrous mileage on them, on a modern vehicle, if you keep on top of maintenance, engines and transmissions can last hundreds of thousands of miles.
As for suspension components on a Tesla though, I would expect to spend a decent bit keeping all of them in working order. The suspension on a Tesla is really nice, but air suspension isn't nearly as robust as a simpler Macpherson strut setup on an econobox. It's fancy, but fancy suspension and more moving parts means more things to wear out and fail. You've got 2x the ball joints to fail in the front, additional linkages all over, and more bushings to wear out.
My toyota has lifetime trans fluid, which smart owners change every 100k. Chevy iirc was the 1st to try this in the corvette transaxle. It makes maint a lot harder if you keep a car more than a decade. No fluids additives can last that long. You will just end up replacing whole components instead of servicing them.
And all ecars have at least a differential, and many have gearsets, even if they do not shift. These are mostly heilical/hypoid style gears. That fluid uses shear additives that need to be replenished to abate wear. If you have not changed your trans/diff fluid in over 100k, now is the time. Your jeep, having a solid axle, is tremendously more simple and overbuilt than a normal car too. Extrapolating from that is not accurate.
The Bolt is not direct drive, it has a single motor hooked to a fixed gear ratio final drive and a differential in it. It looks like Chevy doesn't actually provide a maintenance schedule for the oil in the gearbox but it's no different than any other gearbox, the oil will wear down from shearing and contamination will build up over time. 100,000 miles is probably a good service interval but Chevy doesn't bother to tell you how often you should change it.
>Reduction gear oil is just inspect; it's a single gear.
Well actually, a Nissan Leaf is going to have 8 gears in the reduction drive. 4 in the differential, 2 to couple the differential to an intermediate shaft, and another 2 to couple that shaft to the motor itself. That being said, ATF does wear out over time, those gears are going to be adding finely powdered metal to the fluid and even just the shearing forces on the fluid literally breaks down the oil chemically. It'll certainly last a whole lot longer than engine oil but eventually that inspection is going to necessitate a replacement.
Everyone buying new cars is buying them for non-economic reasons. The purchase price of any new vehicle is a tough sell.
If your primary concern is cost-per-mile, it's hard to beat an old $250 moped off Craigslist that gets 100+ mpg.
If you claim you need something more enclosed, an old truck for $2000 might be your answer. In that rustbucket, you're belching smoke into the atmosphere and burning a dollar of gas every 5 miles, but it will still get you more than 100,000 miles before you match the purchase price of the Prius. In those same 100,000 miles, the Prius has been burning gas as well (true, at a whopping 47 mpg) but this gas cost would be enough to buy you a replacement old truck (or, let's face it, a second old truck).
To be more serious, I bought my 2003 Toyota Matrix XRS with 150k miles for $3100, and have been getting about 30 mpg for the past 60,000 miles. Every purchase of a new vehicle - hybrid, electric, or gas - is done for non-economic reasons.
> Electric vehicles are a tough sell now though. The Bolt EV costs $36,620, the Prius $23,475.
You could split the difference -- buy a Chevy Volt for $34,095 ($26,595 after Fed Tax Credit). Drive electric up to 50+ miles per charge, but still get 42mpg when driving on gasoline, with over 420 miles of total range per fueling.
> In general people buying electric vehicles in 2017 are buying them for non-economic reasons. They lose money. Hybrids are likely the best bang for your buck.
I'd argue plug-in hybrids are where the real sweet spot is.
It's only an extra $3k over the Prius, to get ~90% of your driving miles via zero-emission electricity, but still have full gasoline available for any long-distance trips. I think that's a really compelling argument. It's really easy to save more than just $3k on fuel alone, after a couple of years with that car.
Regular hybrids are cheaper up front, but are wasteful. They cheap out on tiny batteries that are way too weak to take full advantage of the vehicle's technology. Stick a wall-chargeable 10-20 kWh battery into a hybrid, and you get the best of everything in one vehicle.
Hybrids are cool, but now you have to maintain an electric and gasoline engine. I'm in the market for a new car and when comparing the prices of a new Chevy Volt vs. a new Chevy Bolt, it's not a huge price difference to go all electric and greatly reduce moving parts.
The Chevy Bolt has a $7500 electric vehicle tax credit, many states have rebates of $1000 to $3000, and some utility companies offer their own rebates and incentives. That narrows the price difference quite a bit, and drops it well below the average new car selling price.
You're also not going to be producing gasoline at home, while a lot of people buying these expensive early electric vehicles are also early adopters of solar panels.
If you look at the $/kWh trend on lithium ion batteries (over 80% drop in 6 years), the most expensive part in these cars, it's only a matter of time before EVs cost no more than other types of vehicles without the government help.
> You're also not going to be producing gasoline at home, while a lot of people buying these expensive early electric vehicles are also early adopters of solar panels
I'm an electric car fan, but to be fair, unless your solar installation is proceeding more than you can use, and you don't have net-metering, then this is a false advantage here. Every KWh you use to charge your car is one you'll eventually have to buy from (or not sell to) the power company.
Solar panels which are paid for themselves by sending money back to the grid. If you redirect it into your vehicle, then you've just transferred the cost from the power company to your solar panel loan.
If you're out of the house during the day, you can sell those kWh to the grid at peak prices, then buy them back at night when they're cheap and you're home charging the EV.
You forgot oil changes in you calc. Also your $8.70 is only $4.19 in Washington :).
Costs are dropping on EVs and will continue to drop as economy of scale picks up. They may not make sense today but there's a good chance they will tomorrow.
The hydroelectric generation is cheap in Ontario, but not overly abundant. The majority of the power in the province comes from much more costly nuclear sources.
Are you, perhaps, being sarcastic with your comment?
Anyway, there are few countries (if any) on Earth where EVs make financial sense for an average person. Their time will come, but buying into it now is not investing – indeed, as the GP commented, you do it for altogether different reasons.
No, he's not being sarcastic. Are you? EVs don't require oil changes. Or muffler/exhaust service. Or transmission service. And their brakes last longer.
A properly designed EV (Tesla and GM, not Nissan, Kia or VW) has a properly designed cooling and battery maintenance system, and shouldn't need battery replacement for a _long_ time.
Yup and if you want to make a true comparison find a 500hp car(that will probably run on premium, get ~25mpg and use synthetic oil). That's what our 85D is.
Did I break even? No, but with prices coming down it'll happen.
No, I didn't break even because I came from a '03 beater that I'd been driving for the last 15 years. The thing is, if no one buys EVs there won't be sustained demand. I don't mind spending a bit more on my end to make sure the industry moves forward(I believe they call that voting with your money).
Multiple people where I work change the oil in their cars at this rate. I explained that you can go further with more modern oils, especially synthetic, to no avail. I think you'd be surprised at how much people spend on car maintenance.
In the UK people are told to change their oil once a year or 10k miles. If you do it every 3k miles in the US, which of us is doing it wrong? Either we're damaging our cars or you're wasting money and oil. They're the same cars doing the same distance, and parts of the US are similar climates.
I guess I'm at the other end of spectrum by simply following what the manufacturer proposes: I change my oil along with the filter every 18,000 miles, and so far, after 100,000 miles (and then some) have not had any issues. (My car is rather cheap, or in EV sense practically free, so I'm not all too concerned, either.)
The engine does not consume too much oil, either, so a single 4L bottle – about a gallon I think – is easily all that the oil I need between changes. With European prices, that is the equivalent of a single refill (even with my modest tank size), which makes you simply laugh and wonder at all the people that (always) bring up oil changes in the discussion of ICE vs EV. I can't but wonder how many of those actually own and maintain a not-imaginary vehicle.
It's a VW Polo from the early noughties. Petrol, albeit a rather small engine to match the car :)
To clarify my earlier post, I meant of course that a single bottle of oil is enough for the refill (between 3 and 4 litres) and more than enough for any top-ups for the about 30000 km before the car starts to remind of the end of the “Long Life” maintenance cycle. Oil is certainly not up there when it comes to costs of owning a small car, ICE or not.
A cursory look at used oil: it's still rather like the stuff that goes in, albeit black, of course. Without specific tools, I think it's impossible to tell it apart from oil that's used for, say, 10000 km.
thats a pretty standard recommendation from practically all german car manufacturers - to change oil roughly every 30-35k kilometers - which is about 18k miles.
I've never seen that anywhere in the United States. 10k miles is the highest I've seen for BMWs & if it isn't that, people say the typical advice is "once a season" depending on how you drive.
dealerships in the US are nicknamed "stealerships." People typically don't go to the dealership for service once the warranty is up, if at all. The dealerships in my area charge as much as 4x the cost of independent shops for maintenance: $120 for an oil change at the local toyota dealership vs. $30 at the garage 1/4 mile down the road. The dealership is also more likely to find non-existent problems with wear parts like brakes, belts, filters, suspension, etc to upsell you or push you to the sales department.
3,000 mile oil changes hasn't been a standard recommendation in the US for at least a decade, probably longer.
These days, most (all?) cars have an idiot light that pops on every 5-10k miles, based on usage patterns. Some have a more robust algorithm than others. Either way, in my experience, my last 3-4 cars (Jeep, Lexus, Volvo, VW) have all gone about 8k miles between services, as indicated by the light.
In all honesty, the only way you can really know when to change your oil is to have regular oil analysis done, to know when certain variables change that indicate "oil change needed soon" (or worse - service engine now). But that isn't cheap, and it must be done on a regular schedule, and you must also understand the results.
It used to be that the oil change interval was something like 3k miles for stop-n-go traffic (or dusty conditions) - ie, regular city driving. You could go about 6-8k for highway driving. If you were doing off-road driving, the number could be as low as 2k.
Today's oils are better, and so is the manufacturing and other factors; so longer intervals don't surprise me - but you have to be dealing with a newer car, something made in this century at least.
Even so, for my own vehicles I try not to go much beyond 6k between changes, and for one of my vehicles it's closer to the 3k mark (because I want it to last as long as possible - then again, its engine is a known oil-burner, and between oil changes I add enough oil for it to equal an oil change; I could almost just change the filter and do nothing else). The money I may be wasting isn't a big deal to me, plus I get a fresh filter (also, I do my own oil changes, so the numbers are a bit lower depending on what dino juice I use).
Generally, the best way short of an analysis to judge doing an oil change is by looking with your eyes at the color of the oil, by feel (rub it thru your fingertips), and by smell. It's a thing you have to get a "feel" for, and between that knowledge and what your miles since the last change, you can know if you need a change or not.
Another thing you can do (I learned this from a website that tested an analysis company - and to see how long they could really go between oil changes) is to (every 3k) drain a quart of oil out of the engine (you need something like a fumoto plug for this), and then swap on a new filter and refill with a new quart of oil. It's basically a "topping up" procedure, but if you do that, you can go for about 12k between full oil changes. However, you should only do this if you are analyzing your oil.
The 'idiot light' is not based on miles, but on how much oil is actually in the engine. There's a sensor in there that if it touches air, essentially, the light goes on. You can trip this on certain VWs if you turn very sharply & you are low enough on oil.
Compare this to GM/Chevy vehicles where this is a 'solved problem' with their on board DICT computer, it measurements the containment (via resistance? electricity?) in the oil & tells you the 'health' or 'life' of the oil until you need to change it. This leads to a lot more reasonable oil change intervals in line with Mobile's testing over the years: 5k, 7k or 10k change intervals are common.
BMW is one of the few brands that recommends once a season, or 10k, because they know what oil is capable of, in so far as they've removed dip-sticks entirely (retarded decision, but hey). However, most dealerships & shops? They still want that sweet money on that 3k oil change. 5k has become the 'open secret' standard, though.
The 'idiot light' is not based on miles, but on how much oil is actually in the engine. There's a sensor in there that if it touches air, essentially, the light goes on. You can trip this on certain VWs if you turn very sharply & you are low enough on oil.
I'm talking about the "Service Required" indicator/message that appears in the central info display, not the "Check Engine Light". Two different things in the VW, Lexus, and Jeeps I've owned.
> In general people buying electric vehicles in 2017 are buying them for non-economic reasons. They lose money. Hybrids are likely the best bang for your buck, and may remain that way even after Tesla ship their $36K competitor (since no other major metric in the equation changes, electricity is still very expensive, and gas very cheap).
That may be true in America. Here in Norway, fuel costs 1.7 euros/L; that is, $7/gallon. The calculation comes out rather different.
I think it's possible that the economics of electricity will change dramatically in the next few years. Already, in several states, we see days where solar generation momentarily dramatically exceeds demand - and with solar so cheap now, that's only going to get more extreme. Charging batteries seems like a good thing to do with a power surplus, and it makes more economic sense to charge a consumer's battery than to fill up some grid-storage solution.
For what it's worth, I've been driving an EV for three years and haven't spent a cent on fuel. My work parking garage has a free charger, as does my wife's. half a mile from my home there are free public charging stations as well. I could charge at home, but free electricity is awesome. I don't expect this to last forever of course, but it has made my car costs infinitely cheaper to run.
You'd be surprised at how much the maintenance savings are. They could easily make up the difference in price of the car. Especially when you count the $7500 tax refund for getting an EV. It's not just oil changes but everything else having to do with an ICE you get to skip out on. Plus brake changes are far more rare due to so much regenerative breaking.
Lastly I would add that you can't directly compare the cars on price in that way because the Bolt (and Nissan Leaf) are also much nicer cars than the base $23k Prius with many features the Prius doesn't have.
EDIT: oh and one more thing; I don't know about Utah but most energy companies in the US have different rates for electricity during the day or at night (off peak) and you can easily set your EV to charge overnight, saving even more money.
>I don't know about Utah but most energy companies in the US have different rates for electricity during the day or at night (off peak) and you can easily set your EV to charge overnight, saving even more money.
Thanks for mentioning this. It is significantly cheaper to charge at night if your energy company drops the price during off-peak hours. That $8 or $9 drops to like $3 or $4 here in MA with National Grid service. I did some really rough math and figured that it would cost about half as much to charge a Chevy Bolt from 0 to 100% than it would be to fill my current car, a 2014 Jetta, with gasoline. My greenhouse gas emissions will go down by over 50% judging from an estimate I got based on how MA currently generates energy.
That said, I put a deposit down on a Bolt Premier but am not sure if I will be buying it because it is damn expensive, even after tax rebates and such.
Honestly you can take the $10k+ difference and donate it to charity or save it up for your kid's college, if you have children. $10k can buy malaria nets for 4000 kids in Africa, if you donate to some place like Against Malaria Foundation. At the moment, I don't see any altruistic outcome from buying EVs. Personally, I am also against using any non-economic arguments in choosing cars, unless you are really rich and the difference is only a drop in the bucket.
Part of the equation is that, conceivably, it's a good thing to give Tesla or whoever enough money to iterate on the things they're designing, so that through the iterations they can make them cheaper.
The cynic in me would say that saving 4000 African children would actually adversely affect the environment, where as supporting development of electric vehicles is at worst trivially beneficial.
They aren't quite economically feasible now but they are getting darn close. Also, how long do electric cars last? I assume they would last longer with the simpler drive trains (except for stuff like battery replacements) but I'm not sure because they are so new. If they can make them last longer that also would solve the economic issue pretty immediately
Gas costs approx $2.24/gallon in Utah. A Prius has a 11.3 gallon tank and a 540 miles range (again, EPA standard). That means that $11.15 would get you the same distance as a full Bolt EV charge in gas.
Now, before electric vehicle fans jump for joy at the $2.45 saving per 238 miles, we also have to account for the cost of the two vehicles. The Bolt EV costs $36,620, the Prius $23,475.
Therefore for the Bolt EV to make economic sense you have to drive 1,276,942 miles. Or fuel has to get much more expensive, or electricity much cheaper. Regardless, the economics don't add up at all when compared with hybrid gas vehicles.
Yes, I know, lower maintenance, but not $13K lower. And before you talk to me about the cost of driving to and from a gas station, let me remind you about battery loss due to cold temperatures (this is Utah we're talking about, after all).
In general people buying electric vehicles in 2017 are buying them for non-economic reasons. They lose money. Hybrids are likely the best bang for your buck, and may remain that way even after Tesla ship their $36K competitor (since no other major metric in the equation changes, electricity is still very expensive, and gas very cheap).