Hi,
Hit 222,222 miles today and thought I'd post some kind of long term review.
The car was bought new from the dealer at the end of September 2014. I had just moved to the mountain north of LA and my commute had become 110 miles one way ~ (220 miles / day) and obviously needed a better mileage vehicle than my pickup.
On paper I was supposed to telecommute a few days a week, which never really happened. I was allowed to recharge the car at work (at that happened) giving me consistently about 95-100 miles of electric per day (more on that below). I was able to shift my hours to "mid-morning" / "late night" to avoid traffic which worked pretty well (4 hours commute per day on good days)
Living up the mountain, mornings would yield typically 60 miles of electric thanks to about 75 minutes of mostly downhill driving. At night, LA is pretty flat up until the Santa Clarita area but by then I have already exceeded the ~ 40 miles range.
For probably 2 and a half years, I steadily did 95-100 miles of electric off a 220 miles commute which isn't too bad, spending about $10-$12 day on gas.
About 1 year ago, I started noticing a little bit of degradation in my electric range. And after looking and doing a little bit of "testing" I found that on a typical flat drive, 72F ambient, no A/C I would do a little less than I used to 35 miles, and more recently 33. Not too bad IMO considering the warranty on the battery was blown within 18 months. Speaking of "testing", nothing special here, my benchmark is -terrible- Friday night which I like for this excellent consistency. As far as driving is concerned, every time I am on the freeway with decent traffic I set the cruise speed to 72 mph, always. no exception.
In these 222,222 miles I had 2 minor accidents: a truck tire bouncing from lane to lane which I could not avoid; it damaged the front left bumper area, no big deal. The second one was a 3-car accident (I was the middle one), some guy couldn't stop and hit my rear pushing me to the vehicle in front of me. While there was no apparent damage (really the cars all looked fine), they did some internal repairs; and after a few months I brought it back to the shop because of a noise; As it turns out 2 of the motor mounts were half broken making these weird noises when braking and accelerating (no noise in cruise). They fixed it and it went fine.
As far as general maintenance, I brought it to the dealer every 30,000 miles (every 6 months) for oil change (that's how long the oil would last before giving me the notice for service) and tire rotation. Once in a while some other stuff would be due, mostly various fluids/filters. Tires are replaced every 60,000 miles (every 12 months). And that is it! Brakes haven't been touched yet which is amazing but I guess the generative braking system does help a lot there.
that's about it... >220K miles in less than 4 years sure is a lot but I am sure there must be a few more crazier folks around that have done more in depth reviews. But if you guys have any question, feel free to ask.
Cheers
Steve
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Hit 222,222 miles today and thought I'd post some kind of long term review.
The car was bought new from the dealer at the end of September 2014. I had just moved to the mountain north of LA and my commute had become 110 miles one way ~ (220 miles / day) and obviously needed a better mileage vehicle than my pickup.
On paper I was supposed to telecommute a few days a week, which never really happened. I was allowed to recharge the car at work (at that happened) giving me consistently about 95-100 miles of electric per day (more on that below). I was able to shift my hours to "mid-morning" / "late night" to avoid traffic which worked pretty well (4 hours commute per day on good days)
Living up the mountain, mornings would yield typically 60 miles of electric thanks to about 75 minutes of mostly downhill driving. At night, LA is pretty flat up until the Santa Clarita area but by then I have already exceeded the ~ 40 miles range.
For probably 2 and a half years, I steadily did 95-100 miles of electric off a 220 miles commute which isn't too bad, spending about $10-$12 day on gas.
About 1 year ago, I started noticing a little bit of degradation in my electric range. And after looking and doing a little bit of "testing" I found that on a typical flat drive, 72F ambient, no A/C I would do a little less than I used to 35 miles, and more recently 33. Not too bad IMO considering the warranty on the battery was blown within 18 months. Speaking of "testing", nothing special here, my benchmark is -terrible- Friday night which I like for this excellent consistency. As far as driving is concerned, every time I am on the freeway with decent traffic I set the cruise speed to 72 mph, always. no exception.
In these 222,222 miles I had 2 minor accidents: a truck tire bouncing from lane to lane which I could not avoid; it damaged the front left bumper area, no big deal. The second one was a 3-car accident (I was the middle one), some guy couldn't stop and hit my rear pushing me to the vehicle in front of me. While there was no apparent damage (really the cars all looked fine), they did some internal repairs; and after a few months I brought it back to the shop because of a noise; As it turns out 2 of the motor mounts were half broken making these weird noises when braking and accelerating (no noise in cruise). They fixed it and it went fine.
As far as general maintenance, I brought it to the dealer every 30,000 miles (every 6 months) for oil change (that's how long the oil would last before giving me the notice for service) and tire rotation. Once in a while some other stuff would be due, mostly various fluids/filters. Tires are replaced every 60,000 miles (every 12 months). And that is it! Brakes haven't been touched yet which is amazing but I guess the generative braking system does help a lot there.
that's about it... >220K miles in less than 4 years sure is a lot but I am sure there must be a few more crazier folks around that have done more in depth reviews. But if you guys have any question, feel free to ask.
Cheers
Steve
