I would have agreed with you but Consumer Reports did a study https://advocacy.consumerreports.org/wp-content/uploads/2020.... that said this wasn't the case.

"Analysis of real-world maintenance and repair cost data from thousands of CR members shows that BEV and PHEV owners are paying half as much as ICE owners are paying to repair and maintain their vehicles."

"The data were filtered to remove: ● Incomplete responses. ● Vehicles that reported traveling less than 2,000 miles in the past 12 months. ● Vehicles that reported traveling more than 60,000 miles in the past 12 months. ● Vehicles that reported maintenance costs of over $20,000 over the past 12 months. ● Vehicles with more than 200,000 total miles."

that doesn't change the responsibility angle. granted, I might be more acutely aware of it because I've always bought used vehicles.

I do suspect that the ICE portion of the Volt could be a lot simpler than a regular gas powered vehicle since it's not directly connected to the wheels. A generator configured to run primarily with a fixed load size and in its peak efficiency zone is different from what you find in the typical gas car.

As mentioned the volt has the electric motor, gas motor and wheels all part of the same unit.

On the other hand, the bmw i3 is a serial hybrid. I think the two models are basically an EV and an EV+generator (range extender). One got more subsidies than the other.

What I wonder about is - what happens to the i3 when the electric battery is depleted and all you have is the generator? Can you maintain speed? Will you run out of battery first or run out of fuel?

I am on my second i3+rex. I love the things to pieces.

In the US the rex comes on when the main battery is down to 7% charge. (Europe or re-coding the car allows you to set when it comes on -- up to 75% I believe? I haven't coded either of mine) You can actually outrun the rex engine with the right combination of high speed, climbing grade, or cold weather. If it gets to 0% the car will literally shut down. A serious warning appears at 2% about this.

I've never had mine below 2.5% (there is a setting on the driver display that allows you to display this number). It takes uphill driving over 75mph in cold to really draw down those last few % and outrun the range extender.

The rex tank is 9L, so it adds about 70-100mi to the total range of the car depending on how you drive it. We add a few gallons a year to ours, as the EV itself is sufficient -- it's great for those surprises life throws you where you need another few miles.

$0.02. :)

In Gen2 Volt it is actually connected to the wheels in some modes. It's not a series hybrid.

But its maintenance is very low. Very little wear on it.

For almost all normal use cases, the Volt gen 2 is a series hybrid. The engine only runs when the battery is depleted and it operates in a non-stressed, constant rpm mode where it is supplying charge to the EV motor that is buffered by the battery. There is a parallel hybrid mode but it is only triggered under extreme conditions.

2013 Volt owner. What you are saying is, on paper, true I guess. The actual situation of me and all my Volt friends is that the cars are VERY reliable. I have 128K miles (105K EV miles) so my engine has only 22K miles after 7 years. Besides tires, ONE oil change and a front-end CV issue -- I've spent zero on maintenance.

FWIW, my next car will be a Model Y.

I have a PHEV (Ford C-Max Energi), and with low miles the oil change interval is two years, rather than my gas only vehicles with a one year interval. I may be a terrible person, but I don't really keep track of the other intervals; if something needs doing, it'll likely come up when in for the oil change or make a terrible noise.

Also, the just off lease C-max was very inexpensive, and gets huge gas mileage, so even if it explodes, whatever. It got me a carpool sticker for a year too.

It's true that the Volt does have a lot of complexity - however you also have access to the existing infrastructure for gas cars.

My solution was a leaf and a gas vehicle (which pretty much went unused)

EVs (increasingly) have cooling loops for the batteries. They can likely be very low maintenance, but the stuff is there.

Are any of these using pressurized systems, do they even have an open side? Complex systems like the Tesla do have pumps that could potentially go bad.

Hopefully lithium batteries aren't reaching 200f degrees;

In practice, a PHEV like the Volt is more reliable and has less maintenance than an ICE vehicle. The engine in the Volt only runs in the rare cases where the battery charge is low. When it does run, it generally runs at a constant, low stress RPM while supplying power to the electric motor with buffering from the battery. This is generally acting like a series hybrid. (The parallel hybrid mode is only activated in some rare cases). The result is that the EV motor is used for most miles and the gas engine lives a rather pampered life.

The car also keeps track of gas miles and gives you an estimate for remaining oil life. Under typical usage, that results in an oil change every couple of years. I think that the spark plugs are 100K plugs so they will eventually need replacing but not often.

Way less effort than a a regular gas car. If you don't use the ICE very often, you only have to service it every 1-2 years. The electric system is very simple and requires almost no maintenance.

I've never had a vehicle that required less maintenance than my 2017 Volt. Up to 100k KM on it now and I've changed the oil once + tire swaps and some rust removal on the brakes because they don't get much use due to regen. That's all. But 88% of my travel is pure electric, so. The ICE only needs as much maintenance as you use it for.