As a new first-time owner of an electric vehicle, I thought it would be helpful to do a series of posts on some of the questions I had getting my first EV, a 2016 Chevy Spark EV, in January 2019.
In our first installment, we looked at the expense of actually purchasing a vehicle. This time we’ll talk repairs and maintenance.
There are many components in a gas powered vehicle that an EV simply doesn’t have, and therefore, don’t need to be repaired or replaced. It has no motor oil, no spark plugs, no radiator fluid, belts, hoses or other similar parts that wear out over time. Of course, an EV still has tires and brakes, even those can wear out with far less frequency.
Let’s discuss brakes as an example. All hybrids and EVs have what’s called regenerative braking, which means when you take your foot off the gas, the car uses magnetic power to slow the car down. This returns some of that kinetic energy back into your battery. As a result, your brake pads are not used, and tend to last a lot longer! I’ve heard reports of hybrids going 150k miles before new brakes are needed.
And EVs simply have fewer moving parts to break or wear out. Tesla brags their drive train has a total of 12 moving parts! By comparison, gas engines have literally hundreds or even thousands of parts in the drive train alone.
As an example, I recently got a reminder email from Chevy about my maintenance checkup. The list of items to check consisted of rotating tires, checking my wipers and filling my washer fluid. That’s it! Now multiply those savings over 5, 10 years or more.
Of course, the #1 concern of potential EV buyers concerns the battery, as in how long will it last? While every manufacturer makes a few lemons from time to time, there have been isolated instances of excessive battery performance degradation. Major manufacturers have acknowledged this apprehension, and have re-written vehicle warranties to include coverage for battery performance. But as a whole, the vast majority of vehicle batteries are expected to last well over 10 years.
Next we’ll discuss the day-to-day cost of driving an EV such as fuel (if you can call it that) and insurance.