Drivers of electric vehicles spend half as much on maintenance and repair costs over their vehicle’s lifetime compared to owners of gas-powered vehicles.
Data is king, and when it comes to information on the frequency of repairs on automobiles, Consumer Reports has more data than anyone. For its latest report, it did a deep dive into the data from its 2019 and 2020 reliability surveys of electric and gasoline powered vehicles. After crunching all the numbers, Consumer Reports says “drivers of electric vehicles are saving an average of 50% on maintenance and repair over the life of a vehicle compared to owners of gas-powered vehicles.”
Consumer Reports (CR) is an organization dedicated to helping consumers make informed choices about products, services, and safety. Their most recent report looked at data from its 2019 and 2020 reliability survey of electric and gasoline-powered vehicles. For purposes of its research, CR uses 200,000 miles to represent the normal service life of an automobile.
“Electrics just don’t need as much maintenance as gas-powered cars, and even though repairs won’t necessarily be less expensive, they are less frequently needed,” explains Gabe Shenhar, associate director of CR’s Auto Test Center, which specializes in electric vehicle testing. “In addition to being easier and cheaper to maintain, many EVs deliver better acceleration compared to gas-powered vehicles and don’t pump harmful pollution into our air.”
For the purpose of its research, CR regarded the normal service life of an electric car to be 200,000 miles and assessed the cost per mile of repairs for battery electric vehicles, plug-in hybrid vehicles, and gasoline-powered vehicles.
In addition to finding that the maintenance and repair costs of an EV are 50 percent less than those for cars with internal combustion engines, the report also found that the same savings are achieved by plug-in hybrids (PHEV). This finding lends support to the idea of driving a PHEV if you are not yet ready to make the fully-electric switch.
In a separate study, Consumer Reports stated that, on average, electric cars emit 60 percent less greenhouse gas emissions than oil and gas-powered ones. This goes to show that opting for an EV is not only an economically sensible choice but also an environmental one.
Source: CleanTechnica