That wasn't a made up number. He listed the source for it. Maintenance is not covered by warranty,
@FastEddieB.
5 years should be around 75,000 miles. That's about 10 oil changes (and tire rotations), 3 sets of brake pads, 2 air filters, a new set of tires, etc... I can easily see it getting to $3K if you actually do the recommended maintenance. If you just drive it until it breaks, yeah you could probably save some money in the short term in exchange for spending more later.
Edmunds.com actually puts the 5-year maintenance cost of the Civic at $3610:
https://www.edmunds.com/honda/civic/2020/cost-to-own/#style=401830283
I was just looking last night and I can't find a single Model 3 on the used market for under $35,000, so I'm not sure where they're getting their data. It's likely some sort of an extrapolation using ICE car depreciation curves, not based on reality.
I was hoping that someone besides me would notice that they linked to a Google spreadsheet used for the article in several places, and fix it up. Sigh... I guess I'll do it myself.
So, I'm going to do the comparison against my current car (Volt) as much as I can. Let's see how this goes. I made the following adjustments:
1) Changed sales tax to 5.6%, my local rate in Washington County, WI.
2) Adjusted prices to current values
3) Adjusted EV tax credits. GM is only one quarter behind Tesla on the phaseout, so right now, both get only an $1875 credit. Tesla credits will be gone at the end of this year, GM's $1875 will last one additional quarter.
4) Adjusted resale value based on my own experience and comparison of current used Model S values with their original prices to gauge 5-year high mile depreciation on Teslas (since there are no 5 year old Model 3s yet). Neither one was as good as the spreadsheet originally showed.
5) Split the miles per year into gas miles per year and electric miles per year to account for the usage of both fuel sources on the plug-in hybrid Volt.
6) Updated maintenance costs per Edmunds.com.
7) Used the actual MPG (for Volt gas usage) and MPGe (for electrical usage for both) rather than the more-generic 4 miles/kWh used in the original comparison (though that number is valid for the M3 SR+.) Sourced from fueleconomy.gov.
8) Used $2.40/gal for gas, since that's roughly what it's been here for a while now.
9) Used $0.13/kWh for electricity, since that's what I pay.
10) Accounted for the roughly 10% losses due to charging efficiency on the EV miles.
11) Added a line for insurance quotes, and obtained them for myself and my wife from Liberty Mutual. Shocker: The insurance on the Volt was *double* the insurance on the Model 3!!!
5-year TCO results, using numbers corrected for all the concerns raised in this thread: $36,356 for the Model 3, $45,297 for the Volt. I'm actually quite surprised by that...
The big surprises: Even if you wipe out the maintenance and purchase/resale stuff that favors Tesla, you still come out ahead with the Model 3. Nearly $3K in fuel savings over 5 years even compared to a PHEV (though this is largely due to how I drive the PHEV - long commute), and $1500 savings in insurance costs. Crazy.
If you want to take a look:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...mUja1CIN-8hFTttNnfDKjTm4g/edit#gid=1853012159