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Cost of owning a BMW i3

tomkiss.net

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Re: Cost of owning a BMW i3

#71

Post by Traster »

gwbas1c wrote: post #60
bluGill wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You don't understand the difference. Just look at the cost of brakes. An ICE car will need them every 30-60k miles depending on various factors, but an electric car will need them every 100-200k miles.

People do understand the difference, my household drives around 3000 miles per year, so telling me that a brake change once every 10 years is important is kind of ridiculous.

It gets down almost entirely to personal behaviour.

Re: Cost of owning a BMW i3

#72

Post by gambiting »

peterwwillis wrote: post #69
gambiting wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>You can get a different, cheaper size, as long as it doesn't rub the wheel well or bottom out. In the UK you have to tell your insurer if you do that and it can impact your insurance significantly in some cases. The best one I could find was with Aviva they allow 10mm variation in width of the tyre from the manufacturer spec, so if the original size was 225/45 you could buy 235/45 or 215/45, but anything beyond tha…

Why would you tell your insurer? They don't go around checking tire widths, afaik

Because if you have an accident and they find out you had tyres/rims different from stock they will absolutely either refuse to pay out the claim or reduce it significantly. Especially if you put on tyres of a different size than that approved by the manfucaturer, they can very easily say that a tyre that is too narrow/too wide affects how the car handles and it would have contributed to the accident.

Re: Cost of owning a BMW i3

#73

Post by 693471 »

randcraw wrote: post #55
Finnucane wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

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.

Re: Cost of owning a BMW i3

#74

Post by matthewdgreen »

Gravityloss wrote: post #62
natefinch wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, you can get a Tesla Model 3 long range for $47k that goes 310 miles on a charge and gains 200 miles on a half hour recharge at a supercharger. That seems... like more driving than I'd really ever do. (half hour is super easy to blow when you go pee, grab a coffee, check your email and social media... and keep in mind that's after like 4 hours of driving)

Sounds better. But it's so expensive. You can get a used i3 for 20k euros though. And I street park so the ICE is a good backup.

The i3 starts at $44,450 new, which is almost exactly the same as the Tesla Model 3 LR. I guess it's nice for consumers that there are used i3s out there (probably will be true of Tesla in a few years) but from a business perspective, selling the i3 just seems like a crazy proposition.

Re: Cost of owning a BMW i3

#75

Post by api »

tres wrote: post #36
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 t…

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.

Re: Cost of owning a BMW i3

#76

Post by 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... 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.

Re: Cost of owning a BMW i3

#77

Post by Gravityloss »

randcraw wrote: post #66
Gravityloss wrote: post #11

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…

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-...

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.

Re: Cost of owning a BMW i3

#78

Post by jbarberu »

Traster wrote: post #71
gwbas1c wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't understand the difference. Just look at the cost of brakes. An ICE car will need them every 30-60k miles depending on various factors, but an electric car will need them every 100-200k miles.

People do understand the difference, my household drives around 3000 miles per year, so telling me that a brake change once every 10 years is important is kind of ridiculous. It gets down almost entirely to personal behaviour.

Agreed. I just replaced my wife's brakes, rotors and pads, at a grand total of $350. The old pads probably had about 50% left after 50k miles.

If you don't tailgate and slam your brakes all the time, they last a long time, even on an ICE.

Re: Cost of owning a BMW i3

#79

Post by majewsky »

bluGill wrote: post #38
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.

So your ICE car doesn't need any gas?

Re: Cost of owning a BMW i3

#80

Post by Gravityloss »

matthewdgreen wrote: post #74
Gravityloss wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds better. But it's so expensive. You can get a used i3 for 20k euros though. And I street park so the ICE is a good backup.

The i3 starts at $44,450 new, which is almost exactly the same as the Tesla Model 3 LR. I guess it's nice for consumers that there are used i3s out there (probably will be true of Tesla in a few years) but from a business perspective, selling the i3 just seems like a crazy proposition.

Here the cheapest new standard range Model 3 is 50,000 euros and long range 62,000 euros. Cheapest new i3 is around 42,000 euros, though they don't mention REX anymore. No used model 3:s are available on the free market so can't compare those.

Sources:

https://www.tesla.com/fi_FI/inventory/new/m3

https://www.bmw.fi/content/dam/bmw/marketFI/bmw_fi/ladattava...

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