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Cost of owning a BMW i3

tomkiss.net

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Re: Cost of owning a BMW i3

#31

Post by bumby »

tibbon wrote: post #22
lnsru wrote: post #3

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?

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 ti…

In addition to the economy of mass production on car tires, motorcycle tires are engineered differently. For example, they are generally higher performance tires with a different contact footprint because the handling dynamics of a motorcycle mean a tire 'leans' into a turn.

Similarly, heavy duty truck tires are more expensive as they have more engineering requirements.

Re: Cost of owning a BMW i3

#32

Post by peterwwillis »

stanski wrote: post #26
peterwwillis wrote: post #10

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 mil…

Minus the 11 grand for selling it after, no?

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.

Re: Cost of owning a BMW i3

#33

Post by archi42 »

antidaily wrote: post #23
czbond wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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.

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.

Re: Cost of owning a BMW i3

#34

Post by brohee »

lazyjones wrote: post #27

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.…

The lastest version has a bigger battery and doesn't offer the range extender IIRC.

Re: Cost of owning a BMW i3

#35

Post by NeedMoreTea »

tibbon wrote: post #22
lnsru wrote: post #3

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?

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 ti…

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. :)

Re: Cost of owning a BMW i3

#36

Post by tres »

api wrote: post #21

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. Overa…

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.

Re: Cost of owning a BMW i3

#37

Post by bitexploder »

lazyjones wrote: post #27

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.…

I expect costs on my Tesla to be about one set of tires / 2 years. I am hard on them and they cost about 400/tire installed. When you consider they is essentially the only ongoing cost to a daily driven car that performs like a legitimate super car in a straight line it is pretty amazing though. I change to winter tires in the winter though. Still I wear down one set of tires per year approximately.

Re: Cost of owning a BMW i3

#38

Post by bluGill »

lazyjones wrote: post #27

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.…

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.

Re: Cost of owning a BMW i3

#39

Post by lazyjones »

brohee wrote: post #34
lazyjones wrote: post #27

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.…

The lastest version has a bigger battery and doesn't offer the range extender IIRC.

Yes, they stopped selling the REX. The i3 is still not a very attractive car for me and despite the good crash test results, it doesn't look safe to me. Here's the aftermath of a frontal crash vs. an old Cadillac that happened recently - both drivers dead: https://image.kurier.at/images/cfs_landscape_1864w_1049h/372...

Re: Cost of owning a BMW i3

#40

Post by benjymo »

archi42 wrote: post #33
antidaily wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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.

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