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As a former Audi owner, I wonder if the "audi service position" will be applicable to their electric cars. Tangental I know, but I would be curious to know if t
by S_A_P 10y ago
As a former Audi owner, I wonder if the "audi service position" will be applicable to their electric cars. Tangental I know, but I would be curious to know if they will make their cars easier/cheaper to service. I never really had much trouble with my A4, but maintenance costs upwards of 1k per 6 months(I was driving a lot of miles at the time) turned me off to the ownership experience.
- andrewmcwatters 10y agoWhat do you drive now if you don't mind me asking? Current Audi owner here. Similar experience, but I don't mind.
- S_A_P 10y agoI decided I wasn't rolling the dice on build quality and reliability enough so I got a Jeep Grand Cherokee SRT. :) So far Ive been pretty lucky with its reliability, and parts/service are orders of magnitude cheaper.
- SEJeff 10y agoElectric cars are far from perfect, but the simple fact that they have less moving parts than an ICE vehicle. No fanbelts to stretch, no flywheels to break, no fuel injection pump, etc, etc. Other than normal wear and tear, there should be massively less maintenance required for electric vehicles.
- sp332 10y agoI know the Nissan Leaf doesn't put much stress on the oil either, so changes are extremely rare. And regenerative braking takes a lot of stress off the brakes, so Tesla's brake pads are rated for 100,000 miles. No spark plugs or air filters either.
- dangrossman 10y agoWhat oil?
- sp332 10y agoThis is half-remembered from an article a while back. It didn't have any details about the "oil" so it might be gearbox oil.
- strange_quark 10y agoI mean, yes that's probably true for mass market vehicles, but not true for luxury cars. Look at Teslas. Yes, the drivetrain is vastly simplified, but I can't imagine things like those gull wing doors, power door handles, air suspension, etc. will be inexpensive to maintain.
- SEJeff 10y agoWell I should have clarified I was referring to the engine, which is the part that generally has the most problems over the life of most ICE vehicles. In the Teslas, there are dramatically fewer moving parts and consumables. No rings to dry rot / wear out, spark plugs, fan belts, oil filters, pistons, fuel pumps, etc, etc. I was actually referring to the Teslas. I do however, think the X was too much too quickly. It is a mess from an engineering standpoint. That being said, the drive train will last much longer than a similar ICE. I suspect in the long run, with battery wear, it will be a bit more than a wash. Disclaimer: I'm long on TSLA and Solarcity Solar Bonds.
- Sanddancer 10y agoGull wing doors are about the only thing there that are more complicated than features in other higher end cars. Air suspension's been in luxury cars for several decades, and there are all sorts of complicated locking mechanisms for doors, including pneumatics in various mercedes vehicles. When you start getting into the luxury lines, you start seeing all the added complexity because everyone needs some signature feature to distinguish themselves from just being a nice comfortable ride.
- vvanders 10y agoThere's a cooling system(at least in the EVs where you don't want fast battery degradation) so that is the only "large" maintenance item. Even then it's only at ~45k and runs about $700. Overall running costs for EVs are incredibly low. At 48k miles right now and my cost in tires($1k @ 30k mi) is actually my highest per-mile cost, even above electricity.
- aidos 10y agoOut of interest, which EV do you own?
- vvanders 10y agoModel S 85D
- zardo 10y agoCritically though, there is nothing like the head to block interface, which is a major source of cooling system issues on IC engines.
- vvanders 10y agoYeah, it's less about design issues and more that you should do a coolant swap @ ~50k. From what I've heard there's some people out there with ~150k and still on the original brake pads(!).
- bluGill 10y agoDepends on a lot of factors. There is no engine oil, so the first scheduled maintenance will probably be the cabin airfilter (20000 miles in every car I've had that has one), and I would guess that anything in the suspension that needs grease will get the same interval (many cars have nothing to grease today but it is a possibility). Then there are tires. Brake pads should last a little longer, but I'm not sure how much. Ultimately though I believe electric cars will be much more expensive in the long run. Nissan wants $5499 for a new battery back. I don't know of any study on how long they last, but reading forums and extrapolating I would say you should plan on replacing the battery pack every 100000 miles. This of course depends greatly on how your charge it which in turn depends on how far you drive. If you drive the full range of the battery every charge you probably need to replace the battery every 50000 miles. If you make dozens of short trips per day, charging after each, you could potentially get several hundred thousand miles. I'm curious about your A4 experience - how many miles were you driving. Unless you are driving 80,000 miles a year I don't see how you can get that high - at 80,000 miles/ year you have timing belt service. If you are driving this many miles the VW diesels (same base platform as the A4, though less luxury) can probably pay for the entire car including maintenance just in fuel savings.
- Retric 10y agoThere is a large difference between charging from 70-100% regularly vs 5%-100% regularly. However, while the battery pack seems like a maintenance issue, it's really a question of fuel. In most places your saving 5+k on gas to refuel with electricity, so getting a 5k bill to replace your battery just means there is no real fuel savings.
- jessewmc 10y agoA4s (and to a slightly lesser extent all other Audis) have been, up until very recently, among the most unreliable new vehicles for sale since the model's inception. Combine that with expensive Audi parts, expensive and zealous dealership labour, and they are unbelievably expensive to maintain. I own a 2006 that I bought for a song--I do my own service, so I was willing to take a bit of risk. The cars are very difficult to work on, even an oil change involves special tools and working around a poorly laid out engine bay. It takes me twice as long to do as any other car I've done. The previous owner of my car put 120,000km on it. I only have the last 50,000km or so of records, but in that time it was towed to the dealer at least twice according to the service records, and she spent upwards of $10,000 on regular service ($250 oil changes? yep) and fixing broken stuff that shouldn't break at that mileage (turbo blowoff valve, ignition coils on more than one occasion, brake lines, the list goes on). She spent over $1000 on every trip to the dealer in that time. I do not understand anyone who buys a new Audi, or for that matter any German car. It's ridiculous.
- rajathagasthya 10y ago1k per 6 months of maintenance costs? If you don't mind answering, what kind of maintenance was it that you had to do every 6 months?
- paulddraper 10y agoMore likely it was maintenance every 18 months that cost 3k. Everything is more expensive on an Audi. It's thousands to replace the fan belt, because you basically have to take the whole car apart.
- rajathagasthya 10y agoThe $3k is for additional repairs on top of regular maintenance, correct?
- paulddraper 10y agoNot the OP, but that's certainly including regular maintenance. To use a previous example, replacing the fan belt is regular maintenance. The problem is that Audis are very tightly engineered. Good in some response, but not for easy maintenance/repair.
- woodpanel 10y agoWas thinking the same. Have driven cars in the same price range and while maintenance is indeed expensive, I've had a hard time even coming near 1k a year.
- gatsby99 10y agoI have an audi a4 2012 and the maintance cost is no where like that. It is 400 $ every 24 th month.