Reduction oil change every 120,000 miles, brake fluid every couple of years, cabin filter (but hardly mission critical), main traction battery check was so Nissan could watch the health of batteries (they can't actually do anything to them, they a sealed unit, you can tell more info with Leafspy and your phone), brake pads basically last forever due to regenerative brakes. Suspension components will eventually need replacing, tires (although mines still on originals after 62,000km with about 4mm of tread still). Really there's nothing to do. I work with industrial engineering machinery, and there are plenty of electric motors on machines that have literally been running all day every day for 50 odd years. Sure maybe electronics might give problems in some cases, but with very little heat involved and very few moving parts, apart from the battery, there's not much that which will need replacing. The drivetrain will last pretty much forever.
,
Jun 30, 9:02pm
Tata the Indian car manufacturer were hot on this for a very short time and were talking about a production car, but then they stopped. And nothing since. Although the new generation 2 Tesla Roadster will have a Space X option pack which apparently replaces the rear seats with pressure vessels and uses a compressor to fill them, this is then used as thrust via nozzles at the rear of the car. Crazy as it sounds, as if 0 - 100 in 1.9 seconds wasn't fast enough already,
strobo,
Jun 30, 10:01pm
They won't ever rule the market.Its a joke really, In Rangiora today maybe 300 cars in the car park and 1 ev charger in front of the warehouse where everyone gets a bargain . a car plugged in on what I call limp home mode lol It's not rocket science seeing where the ev revolution is heading is it ! Wheels still have bearings so mechanics will still be around a long while yet ,Just using crossover skills and updating .Electricity has always been part of the trade anyways ,Nothing new .Just alternative transport that most mechanics with mechanical aptitude adapt to it anyway.They will not become obsolete .Mechanics will be more applicable to evs than electronic engineers would be .It goes back to fitting .found faulty part fitted new module /sensor or whatever,An electronics engineer isn't going line up for that sort work lol. The whole Ev is a novelty and always will be it's seriously gone out of hand .Waste of time and a waste of money.Sooner someone nips it in the bud the better .Time will prove that.
,
Jun 30, 10:50pm
EV's will still require occasional repair, but nowhere near the maintenance that a petrol car does. Sure there will still be repair shops doing things like wheel alignments and suspension, but your still talking about a machine that requires less a fraction of the maintenance of an ICE vehicle, and this will have a corresponding effect on the number of people required to repair and service them.
Why would anyone "nip it in the but?" and how would they do this, they offer superior performance at a fraction of the cost to operate with fewer emmissions, pretty much every major manufacturer is spending billions getting models to market as fast as they can. There's not really anyone in the industry who doesn't think EVs will take over, the debate is more about how quickly this will happen.
eddiedean1,
Jul 1, 9:54am
Cheers for that. Wow that is insane speed! I think I saw the indian guy demonstrate that in the latest season of silicon valley when they all got tesla's and raced them around
tmenz,
Jul 1, 10:27am
Mechanics will just have to charge more.
elect70,
Jul 1, 1:22pm
Speaking ov EVs , how come Zuric Switzerland have Ev single seat racing , thought they had a ban on all vehicle racing there ?
vivac,
Jul 1, 1:45pm
Real world emissions including manufacture are not actually that good. In NZ its not too bad for charging them as most of our electricity is supplied by hydro, but in other countries without clean electricity sources the emissions are much worse.
gypsypom,
Jul 1, 2:41pm
as far as noise goes in a Ev car you can buy an after market modual that makes noise from your stereo like a race car from interior and exterior speakers, it up shifts and down shifts automatically with the cars revs, and they are loud!
s_nz,
Jul 1, 4:41pm
NZ is really well placed for electric vehicles. The environmental benefits are significant, not to mention swapping out imported oil for NZ made electricity is great for our economy.
I see that BP and Shell are investing heavily in supercharger networks overseas. Perhaps they are spending all that money 'just in case ev's become popular'.
,
Jul 1, 7:55pm
In pretty much all real world use cases EV's produce less emissions than ICE vehicles, even when most of your generation comes from fossil fuels. However this is a totally different issue, this is a energy production problem that affects all of your appliances and machinery that runs off electricity. Of course as soon as you move your generation to renewables, your EV becomes zero emission. This is not the case for ICE vehicles, there's no way to make your fuel zero emission with current technology.
harm_less,
Jul 1, 9:13pm
The same sort of doubt was levelled at all those other technology changes that 'wouldn't ever catch on', like personal computers, digital cameras, petrol powered horseless carriages, mobile phones, .
And of course those naysayers are often in denial as they can't imagine their livelihood virtually evaporating such as in the case of photo labs, stable hands, typewriter repairers, watchmakers, . motor mechanics?
henderson_guy,
Jul 2, 6:11am
Not going to be an issue in the foreseeable future. EVs still count for a miniscule part of the market, and will continue to do so with their current shortcomings.
intrade,
Jul 2, 9:43am
Yes but they also use can data bus. Just came off a life stream in uk they talked about certification repair of can bus wires . a twised pair of wire is a canbus usually.
intrade,
Jul 2, 10:00am
lets explain why everything is done for emission reasons. Everyone with 1 brain cell left cant dispute that extra waight causes more fuel to be used . little ammounts are not noticable but they are there . More fuel= more emissions. and rules of 100-tousend airbags stability control rain sensor dailight running lights i could probably write 2 pakes of crap compulsury in modern cars. They all need wires. Wires = waight. So they make wires thinner to save waight and the use canbus to save on wiring = see immage with can without can wires to do the same thing. https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTvPmnnWpZyi6IjxZ8ocNRP8eAjbQsWpCK-BDjeKvpA0I8Fno0M
cassina1,
Jul 2, 12:26pm
They will take off as city commuter vehicles where owners are able to know that an overnight charge is all they will need for a days commute. Having to queue up at charging stations will put off anyone keen to do out of town trips in them. I have read the more you charge them the shorter the battery life too.
harm_less,
Jul 2, 1:30pm
Putting petrol through an ICE is directly related to reducing engine life too but it doesn't seem to stop people doing so.
Also the more mileage an EV does the greater the fuel savings made. In our case the fuel savings in running a Leaf is around $3,000/year, which is about what we expect the price to replace the battery will be when we expect to need to do so in 3-4 years.
cassina1,
Jul 2, 1:44pm
Unless you buy the car with a battery warranty you will never know though if it will last as long as you think, I have read that electric car batteries cost $8000 or more to replace so what you save with no fuel consumption is offset by the cost of battery replacement to quite a large degree. It has been said road user charges at some point will apply too which will further reduce their advantage.
harm_less,
Jul 2, 3:15pm
We have owned the 2012 Leaf since July 2014 over which time the battery range has reduced from 'new' capacity to a bit under 85% now. 3 or 4 years until we will consider swapping the battery out with an aftermarket new one which are available in Japan now for less than $5,000 and will be closer to $2-3,000 by the time we want one.
RUCs are currently 6.2c/km and won't be much more than that in a few years time when EVs start being charged them. The energy costs of running an EV are equivalent to petrol at about 25c/litre so the cost savings are huge compared to an ICE, and petrol prices will be keep on heading skyward as time passes, so a few cents RUC are neither here nor there.
There is plenty of more accurate info available on the economics of runnings EVs so you are best to find those rather than base your knowledge on "I have read" and "it has been said".
richardmayes,
Jul 2, 4:36pm
Unless I am missing something EVs still have tie rod ends, inner and outer suspension bushes, wheel bearings, brakes, hand brakes, and all of those other good things yhat flog out with monotonous regularity on most cars that are more than ten years old?
Mechanics survived the advent of EFI engines and CVT transmissions, I am sure they will survive the rise of electric power.
Like roads, I don't know what I'll be driving in 40 years time but it will likely require a sealed road with a white dotted line down the center of it. And it will likely need a wheel alignment from time to time.
bigfatmat1,
Jul 2, 4:43pm
Wheel alignment and air con realistically need to be checked more often than the ice counterpart. Both these have a significant effect on millage. as well as a possibility for a battery service. Ie re balancing of cells
,
Jul 2, 5:52pm
Why would wheel alignment and aircon need to be checked any more than an ICE? This is pretty much vehicle dependent, I've done 52000km in my Leaf since I've owned it and the tyres are still wearing evenly (and still on the original factory set) despite no wheel alignment. Why would aircon need any maintenance at all?. Batteries can't be serviced, balancing is done by the cars on-board charger. The realities of EV economics in the real world are pretty obvious. I pay about $1.70 per 100km, my car cost $12k in March 2016 and saves me around $4k a year just in operating costs. Its pretty much maintenance free, air in the tyres, water in the washer bottle. At some stage I will change the brake fluid. It' still probably 10kish to sell (2011, 78% SOH battery). No oil changes, cooling fluid lasts 15 years or 200,000km, brake pads also last a very long time due to regenerative braking. There's no heat, so fluids don't break down and so everything lasts for a very long time. The battery will need replacing in a few years (its 7 years old now), but with the car being free on operating costs alone in under three years, who cares?. Being able to fuel your car up from home from a wall plug is also awesome, it's a 30km round trip to the nearest gas station for me.
bigfatmat1,
Jul 2, 7:30pm
Pretty simple explanation is a wheel alignment discrepency will have a more noticeable effect on millage in a ev as opposed to a ice. Also as the aircon draws a considerable amount of power a fluctuation in gas levels has a massive affect on range. Also the battery is fully serviceable. In fact I have a gen 1 battery in bits at the moment. The LBC lithium battery controller is what is responsible for balancing. this is located within the battery pack. Not the charger. You can see this on leaf spy the colours of the bars indicate what cells are discharging. However this system is basically a tiny surface mount resistor to equalise some of the batteries I have seen it would take years of vehicle operation. Here is what your battery looks like inside https://trademe.tmcdn.co.nz/photoserver/full/825079374.jpghttps://trademe.tmcdn.co.nz/photoserver/full/825079008.jpghttps://trademe.tmcdn.co.nz/photoserver/full/825081008.jpg The gen 1 case is infact bolted together with a rubber seal and a heap of 6mm bolts easy case to separate. The gen2 24 and 30kw batteries are infact glued and bolted together. Which makes separating the case a little more difficult but completely doable. In the third picture you will see the LBC Lithium battery controller bolted to the side of the rear stack each cell is connected to that controller there is 48 connections that monitor 96 cells. It is also worth to n.b you prices on replacement batteries is a bit on the light side in fact a 30kw has a retail from austrailia at 65k however its unavailable as it was never sold here new .The 24kw is around 9k fitted. However shipping is 6mnths Nissan will not sell a battery to the retail. The vehicle is to be at a zero emission certified nissan agent. The battery weighs around 250kg so shipping will be expensive for any aftermarket batteries you make claim of.
tga73,
Jul 2, 7:49pm
Ev's need a power grid nuclear,coal,hydro etc.Also I will never buy one.Taxi drivers who have them complain about battery's needing replaced kills the cost benefit. E=MC2 you cant get more energy from thin air. Oil is far more efficient, Evs have a massive carbon foot print due to toxic battery production along with power gird,oil to make plastics, mining .
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