Gee, a niche luxury brand has higher parts costs than mass-produced Japanese cars. Who would have guessed? That might explain why brake pads on my BMW motorcycle cost ungodly amounts more than those for my last Honda.

Meanwhile, over here in the land where the other 90% of the world lives, we haven't done jack to our Nissan Leaf in 30K miles, save a cabin air filter and a set of tires ('cuz the stocks ones suck). Granted, for a Japanese car 30K means "it'll finally be broken in soon", but even our "reliable as a crowbar" Scion xB with 80K needs regular oil changes and gasoline. Had to do brake pads and rotors on the Scion once, too, whereas I expect the pads on the Leaf to last the life of the car (thanks, regen braking). In another 20K miles I expect things like starter and alternator to start failing on the Scion. OTOH, by 100K miles the Leaf will probably need a new $5K battery pack.

In the end, though, I think the difference in maintenance costs is going to be minimal for most. The only difference is the drive train (and arguably brakes), and modern ICE's are pretty darned reliable and long-lived these days.

Curious: this probably depends on the climate where you live, but how's the Leaf looking wrt. brake disc rust? I have had to replace rusted brake discs on a normal car due to poorly working rear calipers. Basically, brake discs don't rust because braking while driving heats them up so they dry out. I would imagine regen braking (like a bad caliper) does not produce enough heat to dry them off.

But to directly answer your question: looking at the discs through the wheel spokes, they're still nice and shiny so I'm going to assume that it's not a problem. I suppose it's entirely possible that Nissan accounted for this and rejiggered the content of the discs, but I don't know one way or the other.

$5000/year on gas is $416/month.

$3700 charging over 2.5 years is $123/month.

That's a saving of $293/month.

Why? They have way less parts. No fuel pump, filter, oil, spark plugs, electronic injection, engine cooling, etc etc.

Drive unit getting replaced is bad. But this seems to be a Tesla-specific manufacturing issue. You don't see those on the (admittedly wimpier) Nissan Leaf. How does it compare to a high performance car?

The ICE-specific expensive parts that have been replaced is the timing belt and water pump (once, at maintenance interval), battery and alternator (once, broken), the clutch (once, worn out), and some of the exhaust (rusted). Total cost of those come to about $400+$400+$300+$200 = $1300 over 14 years. After 155k miles and 14 years, the electric car will be looking at a new battery pack, costing in the $5000 range.

Then of course there are wear'n'tear stuff like suspension parts, wheel bearings, brake pads, new tires etc. that you also have on an electric car.

But take e.g. brake pads, I just replaced both rear ones, cost me all of $40 for the pads, took two hours to do myself. I did the rear shocks two years ago, that cost $70 in parts and an hour of work. For most people, who don't fix their cars themselves, the main cost is for the work at the shop. Local garage quoted me $340 for replacing those rear shocks. A Haynes manual for your car, some coveralls and some spanners is a ridiculously good investment.

And then there is regular ICE maintenance: oil and oil filter once a year, $50. Spark plugs, about every four years, $60. And regular maintenance that also EVs need: window wipers once a year, $40. Washer fluid, ~ $40 per year. Regular washing and polishing, $80-$150 per year.

How expensive is the drive train compared to a combustion engine? maybe I'm missing something.

That's exactly right. The whole drive unit can drop right out of the bottom of the car, so when there are any issues, Tesla will just replace the whole thing so that you don't have to wait for the unit to be repaired. They can then refurbish the broken drivetrain on their own time and then use it to replace someone else's failed unit in the future.

I've driven a 500,000km 1992 Liberty (legacy) Turbo before with original gearbox, engine and turbo. A bit of a nerd fan of these early Libertys all of them these days have between 250,000 and 450,000km on them as a given.

Similarly there are many, many subarus running around in Australia with several hundred thousand kilometres on them and no major issues.

In Australia, Subaru engines are generally known for their reliability.

0 - https://www.tesla.com/en_CA/blog/infinite-mile-warranty?redi...

I doubt they are as generous with the Model 3. I would also sort of expect them to adjust the terms for new buyers of the more expensive cars once they figure out their actual lifetime costs for the warranty.

In other news, a luxury car does not compete well on economics alone.

It's not a surprise that many things fail on a complex assembly with all new parts. No wonder automakers do their best to share small stuff like buttons, latches, door handles etc. between many makes and models.

His situation is unique since he drives a Taxi in Quebec. It is a very harsh environment there in the winter and the roads are horrendous and will wear out a 4x4. There are pot holes that will swallow a car. Hence the wheel bearings. Brakes in a Taxi are replaced very frequently. Where a typically driver might replace them once every 2-3 years a Taxi might replace them 2-3 times a year. The power train warranty (unlimited mileage) has covered his drive unit which I imagine is like a transmission and not the electric motors.

And looking up "Tesla drive unit", you can see it's actually the electric motor + gearbox + inverter.

He saved $250 a month on gasoline didn't he?