> And I never have to change the oil.

Well yeah, you kind of do need to change the oil if you don't want the gearbox to die an early death. There's also still coolant that needs to be changed regularly as well. EVs have significantly less maintenance, but there's still critical maintenance that must be done on time if you don't want to damage your car.

What are you talking about? Here's the official maintenance interval for the Bolt:

http://i.imgur.com/gU4FfdY.png

It calls for tire rotations every 7,500 miles - not a lot you can do about that, and I suspect tire wear will be worse in a torque-happy EV. Skipping them will only reduce your traction, which I suppose could damage you and your car. And of course you have "required services" like brake pads when those wear out and start to squeal; probably less common due to regenerative braking from the electric motor: Engine braking is a habit that takes work with an ICE, but it's the norm in an EV. And you might want to change the cabin air filter when it gets dusty - not that my vehicles haven't gone...a long time...without cabin air filter changes. Skipping them won't damage your car, just your nose. But fluid flushes? Hardly necessary.

Coolant only needs to be changed at 150,000 miles - hardly "regularly". Most ICE cars don't need changes at less than 100,000 mile intervals. In an EV like the Bolt, coolant deals with a lot less heat than an ICE and doesn't suffer microscopic contamination from hot exhaust gasses and oil.

And the Bolt doesn't have a transmission; it's direct drive. Gearboxes (I assume you mean manual transmissions?) typically take synthetic gear lube now with recommended intervals of 200,000 to 300,000 miles. Differentials use the same stuff. I did elect to change the differential fluid in my Jeep at 250,000 miles - but those diffs are taking a lot more abuse than a typical car.

To be fair, I didn't know that the coolant in a Bolt is supposed to be good for 150,000 miles, that's a good bit longer than I figured. I was thinking closer to 90,000 miles, but you're right, the lower service temperature and also less metal surface area will make it last longer in an EV. But in an ICE, exhaust and oil should not be getting into the coolant at all. If it is, any long life coolant is going to need to be changed out immediately while your head gasket is replaced to fix the oil/exhaust leak. One of the major reasons why coolant has a service life is because of corrosion inhibitors present in it that get used up over time.

You're also right that brake pads are going to last longer, on an EV, they barely wear at all. However, there's the brake fluid that will wear out just as fast as on any car. Over time brake fluid picks up humidity, there's no easy way around this. It'll cause the car to potentially lose the brakes if ignored long enough or even rust out brake lines.

Then there's still every single suspension component that a traditional car has. Balljoints and tie rod ends are always going to wear. If you're lucky, your manufacturer might have chosen components with built in grease fittings so that with regular maintenance you can extend the lifespan of those components but that's the exception, not the rule. There's still bearings, shock absorbers, CV joints, motor mounts, and bushings on various things. Every one of those has a finite service life, just because Chevy doesn't list a recommended interval to replace them doesn't mean that they don't need to be inspected and replaced as they wear down.

As for the actual oil comment though, the Bolt isn't direct drive, it has a fixed ratio gearbox with a differential built in. It only has a couple of gears and the differential, but still, they're helical gears and they need the right viscosity oil. Over time, those gears are going to degrade the oil from the shear forces and add contaminants to it. Contaminants are also slowly going to seep in from the vent, you can't completely seal up a gearbox, you need to have a vent on it otherwise running it is going to push oil out of the seals around the axles. As for the recommended intervals you quoted, that's pretty unrealistics and most manufacturers aren't recommending crazy intervals like that.

Here's the maintenance schedule for a Honda: https://techinfo.honda.com/rjanisis/pubs/om/SI9999/SI9999O00...

It doesn't have that high of a service interval but for something like a 2015 Honda Civic it's still just using their regular long life coolant which is supposed to be good for 5 years or 60,000 miles. Brake fluid is something that's pretty much always going to last around 3 to 5 years regardless of manufacturer. And manual transmissions typically have a much more reasonable recommended fluid life of somewhere around 90,000 to 120,000 miles. Some manufacturers are listing some transmissions as having "lifetime" fluid, but there's also identical transmissions with the same fluid in other vehicles where the recommendation is 90 to 120 thousand miles. There's no such thing as "lifetime fluid", every single fluid in any vehicle wears down in use and picks up contaminants, eventually every fluid will need to be replaced. Any manufacturer who tells you otherwise is lying to you.

Do you have a source for some of your claims? Honestly the recommended change interval of 200,000 to 300,000 is higher than I've ever seen and even on stuff like a 2015 VW Jetta you're supposed to change the manual transmission fluid every 40,000 miles. Here's the 2014 Jeep Wrangler service interval for the manual transmission and transfer case: http://www.wranglerforum.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=198...

250,000 miles is much too long for a differential, I'd imagine the drain plug was probably coated in metallic sludge right? I've seen a few drain plugs out of differentials and transmissions that were all treated way better and still be coated in what used to be the gears.

I think you're confusing service interval items that are "check/verify" with "need to do". I'm almost positive you don't need to check or change anything that extensively on a manual transmission VW.

Also, we figured out a long time ago that sealed transmissions are okay, but it all boils down to how you drive the vehicle. Yeah, if you treat the car like shit, or you get the transmission checked (if this is even possible these days), if it's low then there's something wrong & you'll need to add fluid, or drain & fill. Otherwise? You don't touch it & it's fine. Volkswagens last a solid 200-300k miles before you actually need to do something major, but that's subjective.

Yes, there's all these wonderful suspension components, but I imagine with Tesla vehicles, those components are most likely heavier duty than a regular vehicle, given all the fucking obnoxious batteries. They also probably wear a lot differently & components will fail differently than they will & at different rates compared to a traditional ICE vehicle.

No the 40,000 miles really is for replacement. That being said it does sound pretty low and it is for their fancy dual clutch direct shift transmission. But sealed transmissions with "lifetime" fluid wear out faster than a decent transmission. There isn't some major transmission improvement that allows for a sealed transmission, it's just a regular transmission that you can't perform maintenance on.

As for whether or not it's strictly necessary, you can avoid oil changes altogether and a decent car will make it quite a long way before it seizes up.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Justrolledintotheshop/comments/2zoc...

You can do the same with a transmission or a differential, but they'll last a lot longer if you replace the contaminated and worn out fluid with new fluid.

But even just checking the fluid level in a transmission or differential, if the fluid is low, you can't ever just refill it. It didn't burn up, you've got a leak and it'll probably just get worse if you ignore it. There are plenty of vehicles out there with absolutely ludicrous mileage on them, on a modern vehicle, if you keep on top of maintenance, engines and transmissions can last hundreds of thousands of miles.

As for suspension components on a Tesla though, I would expect to spend a decent bit keeping all of them in working order. The suspension on a Tesla is really nice, but air suspension isn't nearly as robust as a simpler Macpherson strut setup on an econobox. It's fancy, but fancy suspension and more moving parts means more things to wear out and fail. You've got 2x the ball joints to fail in the front, additional linkages all over, and more bushings to wear out.

My toyota has lifetime trans fluid, which smart owners change every 100k. Chevy iirc was the 1st to try this in the corvette transaxle. It makes maint a lot harder if you keep a car more than a decade. No fluids additives can last that long. You will just end up replacing whole components instead of servicing them.

And all ecars have at least a differential, and many have gearsets, even if they do not shift. These are mostly heilical/hypoid style gears. That fluid uses shear additives that need to be replenished to abate wear. If you have not changed your trans/diff fluid in over 100k, now is the time. Your jeep, having a solid axle, is tremendously more simple and overbuilt than a normal car too. Extrapolating from that is not accurate.

The coolant on a Bolt EV needs changing after 150k miles (http://imgur.com/7hF0Ijg). What gearbox?

The Bolt is not direct drive, it has a single motor hooked to a fixed gear ratio final drive and a differential in it. It looks like Chevy doesn't actually provide a maintenance schedule for the oil in the gearbox but it's no different than any other gearbox, the oil will wear down from shearing and contamination will build up over time. 100,000 miles is probably a good service interval but Chevy doesn't bother to tell you how often you should change it.

Coolant on my Nissan Leaf is 75k miles. Reduction gear oil is just inspect; it's a single gear. Brake fluid is the normal 30k miles.

>Reduction gear oil is just inspect; it's a single gear.

Well actually, a Nissan Leaf is going to have 8 gears in the reduction drive. 4 in the differential, 2 to couple the differential to an intermediate shaft, and another 2 to couple that shaft to the motor itself. That being said, ATF does wear out over time, those gears are going to be adding finely powdered metal to the fluid and even just the shearing forces on the fluid literally breaks down the oil chemically. It'll certainly last a whole lot longer than engine oil but eventually that inspection is going to necessitate a replacement.