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Cost of owning a BMW i3

tomkiss.net

81–90 of 102 posts

Re: Cost of owning a BMW i3

#81
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This [1] seems to be the report including photos you are talking about. Not sure which image you linked here. Totally different story. [1] https://insideevs.com/news/328403/bmw-i3-vs-cadillac-cts-imp...

> This [1] seems to be the report including photos you are talking about. No, you guessed wrong. The crash I mentioned happened 2 days ago: https://kurier.at/chronik/niederoesterreich/zwei-tote-in-moe... I don't know why you bring up an old rear-ending when I mention a frontal crash...

Sorry, bad google foo on my part.

Re: Cost of owning a BMW i3

#82
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.

So your ICE car doesn't need any gas?

Gas is cheap. Unless you are driving a lot of miles (at which point electric cars don't have the range you need) this is really significant compared to the initial cost of the car.

Re: Cost of owning a BMW i3

#83
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So your ICE car doesn't need any gas?

Gas is cheap. Unless you are driving a lot of miles (at which point electric cars don't have the range you need) this is really significant compared to the initial cost of the car.

Gas is cheap when you don't count the externalities like fucking up the planet or the whole military-industrial complex and wars to guarantee oil supply.

Re: Cost of owning a BMW i3

#84
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yet my 2001 tahoe ICE gas guzzler has required only oil changes, brakes and tires. 260k miles and it still goes strong, diesels easily get to 500k miles An interesting twist would be using a hydrogen fuel in an ICE.

The 4l60 in that Tahoe is on borrowed time. That's on the same order of cost magnitude as a battery. For people who have to pay other people to do maintenance (i.e. most people) whether or not you buy a POS that eats suspension wear items for breakfast and how anal you are about getting every little scratch fixed will dominate long term cost. A couple grand for a battery or transmission spread out over more than a de…

You can get a new tesla battery for 1400 ? granted most folks cant replace one but I can. I cant work on or replace a tesla battery. I have also rebuilt transmissions and that gets you a fraction of the cost because the clutch packs are typically the only wear out part... that and seals.

https://www.transdepot.net/Stage-1-4L60E-98-05_p_215.html

Re: Cost of owning a BMW i3

#85
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 4l60 in that Tahoe is on borrowed time. That's on the same order of cost magnitude as a battery. For people who have to pay other people to do maintenance (i.e. most people) whether or not you buy a POS that eats suspension wear items for breakfast and how anal you are about getting every little scratch fixed will dominate long term cost. A couple grand for a battery or transmission spread out over more than a de…

You can get a new tesla battery for 1400 ? granted most folks cant replace one but I can. I cant work on or replace a tesla battery. I have also rebuilt transmissions and that gets you a fraction of the cost because the clutch packs are typically the only wear out part... that and seals. https://www.transdepot.net/Stage-1-4L60E-98-05_p_215.html

Look at Prius batteries. You can get cells for $25 a pop and rebuilt batteries for a grand.

Tesla will probably never reach that price point because they're a bigger battery and more on the luxury end of things (indeed a reman engine for a German car will hit your wallet harder than a crate SBC) but there's no reason to believe that the industry will all be hard/expensive to service like Tesla and other luxury brands. Also Tesla is particularly terrible about parts supply chain and locking everything down so you'll probably never see aftermarket batteries apply downward price pressure there.

Re: Cost of owning a BMW i3

#86
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yet my 2001 tahoe ICE gas guzzler has required only oil changes, brakes and tires. 260k miles and it still goes strong, diesels easily get to 500k miles An interesting twist would be using a hydrogen fuel in an ICE.

diesels easily get to 500k miles They also cost on the order of five figures extra over gas engines.

I see usually 4 figures over and the standard saying goes it takes 5 years to see the cost equalized. Owning a diesel will save you money but buying or leasing wont.

Re: Cost of owning a BMW i3

#87
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can get a new tesla battery for 1400 ? granted most folks cant replace one but I can. I cant work on or replace a tesla battery. I have also rebuilt transmissions and that gets you a fraction of the cost because the clutch packs are typically the only wear out part... that and seals. https://www.transdepot.net/Stage-1-4L60E-98-05_p_215.html

Look at Prius batteries. You can get cells for $25 a pop and rebuilt batteries for a grand. Tesla will probably never reach that price point because they're a bigger battery and more on the luxury end of things (indeed a reman engine for a German car will hit your wallet harder than a crate SBC) but there's no reason to believe that the industry will all be hard/expensive to service like Tesla and other luxury brands…

I can essentially haul a Prius around on/behind my Tahoe with 6 people plus the driver. Not sure we are apples to apples here

Re: Cost of owning a BMW i3

#88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And then you take it to court, and you get a mechanical engineer and a racing instructor to say that a 215/45R60 is not going to cause an accident that a 205/45R60 wouldn't have caused, since tread wear, hardness, speed rating, structural design, and road conditions all are the most important factors in traction. Identical tires with a 10mm width difference will perform nearly identically, but the same size tire using different manufacturing processes will result in completely different traction. Tires of the same size rating but different manufacture can have comparatively narrower or wider (due to sidewall stiffness) or flatter or bulging (tread patterns) geometries.

But my bet is it's more a matter of following a contract than whether it actually caused an issue; either way I can see not wanting to deal with the potential hassle.

Re: Cost of owning a BMW i3

#89
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.

Most people don’t drive 50 miles a day, but they might drive several hundred over a weekend going somewhere different and fun.

Re: Cost of owning a BMW i3

#90
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look at Prius batteries. You can get cells for $25 a pop and rebuilt batteries for a grand. Tesla will probably never reach that price point because they're a bigger battery and more on the luxury end of things (indeed a reman engine for a German car will hit your wallet harder than a crate SBC) but there's no reason to believe that the industry will all be hard/expensive to service like Tesla and other luxury brands…

I can essentially haul a Prius around on/behind my Tahoe with 6 people plus the driver. Not sure we are apples to apples here

Your Tahoe may as well be a Prius for the purposes of major component cost. Its major components are about the cheapest there are since it's basically a GM truck. It doesn't get any cheaper than that. The Prius is a valid comparison.

When a proper cheap mass market EV comes along it will likely have similar maintenance costs as a comparable ICE vehicles.

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