
Cost of owning a BMW i3 - d3k
https://tomkiss.net/life/cost_of_owning_a_bmw_i3
======
lazyjones
Their i3 isn't even an electric car, it's a hybrid with a petrol engine (range
extender).

The title claims the content is somehow about electric cars in general, but
it's just one datapoint about one model and one owner. FWIW, my maintenance
costs for almost 3 years with a Tesla S90D were so far: €290 for changing and
storing winter tires. No repairs, no breakdowns so far, despite some abuse on
italian country roads. Yearly cost for insurance and (0) tax was half as much
as the 530xd I owned previously.

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bluGill
Your costs for a ICE car wouldn't be much more. There were be a few oil
changes in there, but they are not expensive.

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Finnucane
After 20 years, I'd expect it to be different. We have a '99 Honda CRV, and a
significant chunk of the money we've paid for maintenance in the 12 yrs we've
had it has been for the exhaust system. Over time, on any car, brakes will
eventually need replacing, electrical bits will fail and need replacing, bits
of your suspension will need replacing, and so on.

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randcraw
You expect owning an electric car to be different, yet Teslas also have the
very systems you mention will wear out -- brakes, electric bits, etc -- making
them comparably consumable to any ICE or hybrid, especially after 20 years of
daily driving (like your CRV).

I would imagine any car heavily dependent on advanced sensors and electronics
to cost _more_ to maintain than traditional cars, especially after the first
few years. And those parts will likely cost more than a muffler.

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693471
Tesla brakes are rarely used because the majority of your braking is
regenerative. They're rated to about 150k miles before needing service for the
Model 3.

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jcims
Site getting hugged.

[https://web.archive.org/web/20190828121621/https://tomkiss.n...](https://web.archive.org/web/20190828121621/https://tomkiss.net/life/cost_of_owning_a_bmw_i3)

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api
I recently got a used Leaf with about 70mi range for around $7000 (total cost
including fees, tax, etc.). It's extremely low maintenance (no ICE at all) and
while I haven't done math in this detail yet the "fuel" price even at
California's higher electricity rates is less than half the cost of gasoline
per mile driven. Once you factor in the relative lack of maintenance it's much
cheaper to operate than an ICE.

Overall if you don't need really long range a used Leaf is a great deal. You
can get them in virtually mint condition for under $10k. Just be sure to
research and check out battery health. There's an Android app called LeafSpy
that will use a Bluetooth ODBII dongle (these are cheap) and can query lots of
detailed battery info so you can check out battery health after buying. Mine
was about average in terms of capacity loss for its age and it gets around 70
miles per charge without issue.

Also note that the Leaf's mileage estimate tends to be a little pessimistic,
at least in my experience. My guess is that it's designed this way to avoid
stranding the driver. Gas cars are often a little pessimistic too for the same
reason. They give you a bit of a reserve.

~~~
tres
What's more, many of the Leafs are still under factory warranty when they're
sold for a fraction of their new MSRP.

I bought my 2011 Leaf when it was just about three years old and had somewhere
in the neighborhood of 22k miles on it and paid somewhere around $6k.

I figured it was a pretty safe buy because the car still had plenty of miles
left on the warranty.

I never had to make use of that warranty though; truly the best fit & finish
of any car I've owned. Reliable & by far the best value of any car I've ever
purchased.

After eight years, capacity is running down... somewhere around 40 miles per
charge in the summer now... but that's perfect for my use-case. I'm looking
forward to many more years with minimal maintenance costs. Once the battery
capacity gets low enough, I'll spring for a new battery.

~~~
api
There are companies working on aftermarket battery upgrades. There's one that
has a module that lets you put a newer 40kWh battery in an old Leaf. Such
batteries can be purchased from junked/totaled Leafs. There's another out
there working on some kind of emulated battery module. Neither of these are
quite ready yet but the market is there so I assume such upgrades are coming.

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lnsru
Very detailed writing, thank you! But this “Costs for maintenance totalled
£3056.0” is shocking! It’s a golden car! Ok, it has internal combustion engine
too, but 100€ maintenance monthly is shocking. 8 tires for 45000 km is also
shocking. I am driving almost double that with one set (except nasty flats).
Are other electric cars cheaper to drive?

~~~
tibbon
While motorcycles and cars aren't the same; I've found tires for them are
really expensive. I can get about 3000-10000 miles on a set, and the sets are
$450 installed. There's cheaper tires out there, but good tires are a safety
feature on them really and make a huge difference.

I always bought really cheap tires on my really cheap clunker cars and never
knew the difference. I wonder if it's just volume of cheaper tires, or if
expensive rubber is just more expensive?

~~~
NeedMoreTea
Motorcycle BHP per tonne, and tyre contact patch explain most of a back tyre's
life. The contact patch and lean alone for the front. Counter steering _has_
to be rougher on tyre life.

Buy a 400BHP+ Ferrari or 911 and you can get car tyre life right down to
similar levels. They'll now be $300-$500+ a corner for being super wide, super
low profile, sticky things. $2,000 in tyres every service... A sporty V8 of a
couple of decades ago could easily give 6k miles front, 3k back. With higher
powers now, who knows.

If you could get really cheap clunker type rubber for those cars, you'd
probably be just a few miles from wrapping it round a lamp post. First time
you press the loud pedal with enthusiasm most likely. :)

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thinkcontext
It's worth mentioning, at 10k miles per year this driver is significantly
above the UK average of 7k. EVs are more advantageous the more they are
driven, anyone buying one should do the math for their expected mileage.

~~~
czbond
Thank you for posting that. If they are in the US, 10k is considered low
mileage per year. For working age adults, 18k is considered average.

Source: Bc I'll be asked ;)
[https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ohim/onh00/bar8.htm](https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ohim/onh00/bar8.htm)

~~~
antidaily
Wow. 18k is nuts. 50 miles a day? We lowered our last lease to 10k and wont
even be close at end of the year.

~~~
archi42
I think there are two things at play here:

1\. The US is much larger than the UK, with a lot of nothing/low population
density.

2\. Mentality might be different: I imported my current car used from the
Netherlands; the country is tiny, but the Dutch seem really like driving a
lot. I saw many cars with 30k miles per year on them.

~~~
benjymo
Do people in the US really drive to through the country that often? I guess
people drive maybe 2000-3000 km a year for holidays, e.g. to skiing resorts in
winter or to Italy in summer, but even that isn't average.

I'd say most of the drives are commutes to work and shopping.

~~~
natefinch
When everything is twice as far away, it adds up. My wife and I work from home
and we still manage 10,000 miles a year on the car. That's driving kids to
school (just a couple miles each way), going grocery shopping (10 miles each
way), driving kids to swim lessons (10 miles each way), going to grandma's
house (120 miles each way), our one vacation (150 miles each way)

There's also zero useful public transportation for us. If I worked in the
city, I could take the train, but it's 4 miles to the train station.

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Bedon292
I think this might have been posted here before, but think this is an
interesting comparison as well: [https://cleantechnica.com/2019/06/22/toyota-
corolla-vs-tesla...](https://cleantechnica.com/2019/06/22/toyota-corolla-vs-
tesla-model-3-5-year-cost-comparison/) It is US centric though, so not a
perfect comparison.

So far I have had no issues with my 3. $115 for tire rotation and state
inspection is the only thing I have spent any money on so far in 15 months and
over 20,000 miles. So that is less than $10/month in maintenance. And I am
spending about half as much in electricity as I was for gas. The insurance was
a big jump from a 2011 Ford Focus, but that car has cost significantly more to
maintain in the same time frame.

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brightball
I owned 2 different Chevy Volt's for a total of 5 years. The maintenance was
normal tire wear. Aside from that, oil needed to be changed every 20,000
miles.

I never ran into a single maintenance issue other than the standard. It was
the lowest maintenance vehicle I've ever owned.

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Gravityloss
Too bad, AFAIK, the i3 REX (with range extender gasoline engine) is hobbled by
a tiny gasoline tank. The total range is something like 200 km: 100 electric
and 100 gasoline.

With my current car I can drive to the summer cottage and back with one tank.
It's just carefree and convenient. With an i3, even when starting with full
charge, one would have to tank about halfway each way.

It is hard for me to understand such design decisions. I have heard that in
some countries the gasoline range must be less than electric range to secure
some tax credit.

Edit:

Source:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMW_i3](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMW_i3)

REx 60 Ah: 116 km (72 mi), Total: 241 km (150 mi)

REx 94 Ah: 156 km (97 mi), Total: 290 km (180 mi)[12]

~~~
randcraw
The small gas tank was needed for the car to qualify for a California tax
break as an electric car rather than being a hybrid.

[https://www.autoblog.com/2013/10/28/why-the-bmw-i3-has-
such-...](https://www.autoblog.com/2013/10/28/why-the-bmw-i3-has-such-a-tiny-
gas-tank/)

~~~
Gravityloss
I wonder why they didn't make one for the European market with a bigger one?
It could have been a huge success.

Most of your yearly distance would be covered by purely electric driving, yet
you would not have range anxiety and you could still make those long trips
with your car as well.

Would also be good for the environment as one wouldn't need to tie needless
resources for a rarely needed big battery.

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peterwwillis
TCO is supposed to include the total cost; buy a car that didn't cost 17,400
and your price goes down considerably.

    
    
      Cost of car:         17,400 
      Fuel:                712.99
      Maintenance:         3,056.08
      Other:               940
      TCO over 3 years:    22,108
    

Buy a 5,000 used car, and your 3-year TCO goes down to 9,708. But that's gonna
be gas powered, so you have to lower the maintenance and raise the insurance
and gas. And higher cost per mile means the amount of miles you drive matters
more.

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stanski
Minus the 11 grand for selling it after, no?

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peterwwillis
I don't think that's a useful measure. You really don't know what, if anything
at all, you will get back after 3 years.

If you total your car and you have good insurance, you _might_ get reimbursed
its remaining value, which might be about market, or nothing. If you have a
loan out on the car, better hope it didn't depreciate faster than the loan
payment takes, or you take a loss. Or maybe you don't total it, sell it
privately, and get more than on a trade-in. You don't know what the market
will bear, you don't even know if you'll have ended up with a lemon. But even
if you do get money back at the end, how old it is, whether its insurance or
maintenance costs more, etc will all affect sales later.

I think purchasing a car with an expectation to regain value is gambling. I'd
prefer to buy something I'll drive into the dirt, whether used or new, for a
more certain financial outcome.

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mathieubordere
typo in title: owing --> owning

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rkochman
The title should be “Cost of owning a bad electric car (that is actually a
hybrid car)”

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davidbanham
I wonder why he's getting rid of the vehicle.

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topbanana
Three year leases are common in the UK

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djmobley
OP says he bought the car privately.

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GrumpyNl
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