A new study reveals that while it's more expensive to maintain an electric vehicle in the first year of ownership, in the long run, it's much cheaper than it's petrol-powered counterparts.
The data that We Predict has released, reveals that EVs owners in the US spend around $123 on average for service costs in the first three months of ownership and $306 in the first year. The typical spend of service costs for petrol car owners, by comparison, is $53 and $189 respectively.
However, as time goes on, EV owners spend less on service costs within the first 36 months, averaging $514 compared to $749 for a combustion vehicle.
The study claims the difference mainly comes down to lesser maintenance costs for EV owners, who typically spend $77 exclusively on maintenance during the first three years of ownership compared to the average $228 for petrol vehicles.
The study includes over 13 million vehicles, 400 models, and the results were based on 65 million service and repair orders that in total, cost more than $7.7 billion in parts and $9.5 billion in labour costs. The study also considered maintenance, unplanned repairs, warranty and recalls, diagnostics, software updates, factory-installed options, and service campaigns.
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We Predict chief executive, James Davies, says “the data shows that maintenance costs are lower and maintaining an electric engine over the medium-to-long term is significantly cheaper and less fraught with larger repairs than ICE engines.”
“The average cost of labour on an EV can be two or three times higher than an ICE [vehicle] at the moment because it takes longer to figure out what the problem is, and then longer to solve it,” Davies added. “But you know, once [manufacturers’] technicians have figured these things out — and that information gets disseminated and spread out to all of the other service techs — we would expect to see those labour costs come down.”