Do Electric Cars Last Longer Than Gas Cars?

Post date: 23-Apr-2020 12:24:24

one of the main concerns holding a lot of potential buyers back from buying an electric vehicle right now is concerns over the long term reliability and durability given all the new technology and the high potential replacement cost for a battery pack if it were to fight fail on an electric vehicle in this video I want to answer a few of those concerns by talking about my experience and research when purchasing my 2011 Chevy Volt the Chevy Volt is an extended-range electric vehicle.

which means that there's a 35 mile electric range and when you run out of battery power a gas engine engages which powers the electric motors at the front of the vehicle now this is the first year of the Chevy Volt which was produced from 2011 to 2015 and then in 2016 Chevy came out with the second generation model now given that this is the first year of the bolt it's a pretty good year to look at because a lot of times the main issues with electric vehicles occur.

right at the beginning of production now overall it's been a very reliable vehicle there have been very few repairs or issues with it I've got another video on my youtube channel that goes over the actual repairs that have been done to this vehicle since it was brand new so in this video I wanted to talk more about that long-term durability and the life of the range so this has 73,000 miles on it and there's been almost no reduction in the battery life on the vehicle when I was researching the purchase of this vehicle I also found statistics I don't know whether that's changed or not that suggests that Chevy has not replaced a single battery pack in any volts since they started production now there's a really interesting website.

I'm going to jump there in just a minute and show you that site really great website to look at if you're looking at getting a bolt has a lot of information it's called bolt stats dotnet and what it is is it's a website that tracks real time mileage and efficiency information from many volt owners and you're able to compare different volts the total mileage their efficiency percentage that's run on electric range and on that website there's a two thousand twelve volt that's owned by gentlemen in Ohio and he's put three hundred and seventy eight thousand miles on his volt as of the date.

he's got a two hundred and twenty mile commute charges his battery at home and then when he gets to work for his trip home and looking at looking into his story a little bit he says that he's seen no no or very little reduction in his electric range since buying a vehicle and it seemed very high malphur gallon rating.

so I'll jump there in just a minute and show you some of those statistics but like I said on on my volt I've seen very few issues since it was brand new and the battery life seems to be plenty long to last the life of the rest of the components on the vehicle so this is the home page of volt stats dotnet and if you go down to this listing here you can see that there's a number of Chevy Volts that owners have registered on this website in many different states and you can sort by state evey miles total miles percent.

evey miles per gallon miles per gallon electric and miles per gallon CS now if we if we go to total miles so you can see that there's a 2017 model that's only got 130 1.87 miles so we read recently registered if we replace that now you can see here's Sparky in Ohio it's got three hundred seventy eight thousand and seventy nine miles then we've got one in Arizona that's a 237,000 miles so you can see looking at this that they're already a number of volts with extremely high mileage.

and then you can also sort by evey percentage so here we've got some volts that have been running 100 TV versus there are some others here that they've done a very small percentage probably have really long highway commutes and aren't able to capture that as much we've got miles per gallon so looks like the lowest lowest one is just under 34 miles per gallon all the way up to 130 thousand 432 miles per gallon so it's a really interesting website.

if you're looking at getting a volt gives you a lot of statistics on experience from other volt owners so one of the things that concerned me the most when I was shopping for my Volt was I was thinking okay you've got a gas engine you've got electric motors you got your battery pack you basically have an electric car and a gas vehicle combined into one vehicle so it seems like there's twice as much that can go wrong with the car and so I was a bit concerned about.

okay does that mean that I'm gonna have twice as many repairs there's going to be more that can go wrong with the car and like I said it's been really reliable so far and my perspective on that has really changed with the Volt towards like yeah you've got a gas engine and you've got electric electric side of the vehicle but at the same time in a way that almost means that you've got two systems which means it you know it extends the life of the vehicle double in some capacities there's certainly some components like the electric motors that are being used at all times but I've got a volt here that's run a significant portion I'm averaging about 250 miles per gallon so a significant portion of the mileage has been strictly electric.

which means I have a gas-powered engine inside of this vehicle that's nearly brand-new and so one of the really nice things about that too is even if the electric range were to diminish over time when that happens in the range begins to drop I've got a gas engine in the vehicle that's nearly brand-new and as plenty of life left left in it so if you're concerned about the long-term durability of an electric vehicle hopefully this video will give you a little bit more peace of mind about taking the plunge and getting into electric vehicle.

my 2011 volt with seventy three thousand miles seems to be running great and show it very little indication of anywhere to the battery pack you saw in volt stats net that there are a couple volts that are from the two hundred thousand and three hundred thousand mile range those drivers are still adding miles on a daily basis with an electric vehicle your chance of failure in many aspects is even lower because there's so many less moving components in electric vehicle than you've got in a commune Oh traditional combustion engine so I would encourage you to continue to you know do other research and see what other electric owners electric vehicle owners have to say about the durability of their vehicles and if you have any questions feel free to leave them in the comments below.