My 143,000 miles 2014 BMW i3 has a terrible achilles heel that makes driving it far, far more expensive than it needs to be. And yet, I just ran the numbers and found that it’s still significantly cheaper to drive than a gasoline car, especially here in California. Let’s look at those calculations, and you’ll see why it’s such an insanely good deal despite its rather significant foible.
My i3 has been very reliable. In 12 months and 10,000 miles of driving, I’ve replaced a 12-volt battery and done a preventative differential oil change. That’s it. And other i3 owners say that’s what I can expect for years to come; it’s an absurdly reliable machine. In California, where gas is $5 a gallon, you might think I’d be saving a bundle of money. After all, all I really have to do is pay my power bill, and that’s about it. No regular changes, no weeping at gas pumps, no internal combustion engine replacement parts — I just plug it in every night and I drive.
But the reality isn’t so simple, and my i3 is likely going to cost more to drive than I thought.
The Tire Issue
BMW i3s absolutely chew through tires, and though that’s the case for many EVs, the i3 is among the worst culprits. Hop on BMW i3 forums, and you find pages and pages of conversations about egregious tire wear. Some folks aren’t even getting 20,000 miles out of their set:
Based on what I’m reading, if I’m lucky, I can make it two years on a set of tires before I have to spend $1,000 on a new set of tires, as — and this applies only to the i3 — the tire options are severely limited due to them being a special (skinny) size:
A typical gas car’s tires will last twice as long, so whereas over a decade I’m buying five sets of tires for a total of $5,219.80, a gas car owner would have to buy only 2.5 sets, and likely at a lower cost due to more availability. One can get a decent set of tires for a typical gas car for $700 installed; multiply that by 2.5 and you’re at $1,750 in tires to drive for a decade — that’s $3,469.80 saved driving the gas car over my i3!
But let’s look at fuel costs.
Fuel Costs: Where The i3 Makes Up Lots Of Ground
First things first: Electricity isn’t free. I typically spend about 30 cents per kWh when I factor in both the energy rates at my apartment and those at charging stations. My i3 generally does about four miles per kWh, meaning I’m spending 30 cents to go four miles or 7.5 cents per mile. A typical gasoline car the size of my i3 (like a Mini Cooper) can easily score 32 miles per gallon, meaning every mile costs $5 (which is about the price per gallon here in California) divided by 32 = about 15.6 cents, or 8.1 cents per mile dearer than my i3. Assume average annual miles traveled of 12,500 (that’s about average in the U.S.), and I’m saving $1,012.50 a year on fuel! That’s $10,125 over a decade.
Not to mention, I save $25 every 3 months for not having to do an oil change (I rarely use my i3’s range extender, so we can ignore that for now), and I save loads not having do deal with serpentine belts or oxygen sensors or even brake jobs (since my i3 uses regenerative braking, so pad wear is minimal).
Let’s say we spend $100 every 50,000 miles (four years of typical driving) on a dirt-cheap DIY brake job, that means that over 10 years you’re spending about $250 on that. As for oil changes, if you do one every 4,000 miles like I do, that’s about three per year, or $75 a year or $750 a decade.
So $750 in oil changes, $250 in brake jobs, and $10,125 extra in fueling per year, and you end up with with $11,125 more to operate a typical gas car. Even after you lop off the extra $3,469.80 I’m paying for tires over that span, we’re still at $7,655.20 saved driving my i3 over an equivalent gas car over a decade.
Price Of Entry
But what about the price of entry? Well, this was typically where gas cars gained their ground, but that’s just not the case anymore. New EVs are getting close to reaching price parity with gasoline cars, and used EVs are downright cheap these days. You can buy a 2020 Tesla Model 3 for like $25,000. My 2014 BMW i3 was $10,500, and if I’d gotten a federal rebate, it’d have been closer to $7000. Try finding a 10-year-old luxury car with adaptive cruise control, self-parking, and a Harman Kardon sound system for $7000. Heck, even finding one for the full $10,500 I paid would be tough.
My girlfriend and I just drove a Lexus RZ to wine country last weekend. The thing starts at over $56,000 new, but I’m finding examples with only 1,000 miles on the odometer costing under $40,000. Polestars are getting cheaper, VW ID.4s are getting cheaper, and on and on. If you can find a good deal on a reliable EV, and especially if you can take advantage of a federal EV rebate, you stand to save some good money, assuming gas isn’t too cheap where you live.
Anyway, I just thought I’d share those numbers since I was sure my i3’s tire situation would put me in a hole. But actually, given how pricy gas is, I guess I can deal with it chewing through tires at twice the rate a gas car does.
Top image base photo: BMW
The post My 2014 BMW i3 Has A Horrible Achilles Heel, But It’s Still Way Cheaper Than Driving A Gas Car appeared first on The Autopian.
