Heavy duty commuter recommended maintenance?

4178 Views 44 Replies 14 Participants Last post by Ma v e n, Jan 19, 2019

DuckDuckCruze

Discussion Starter · Jan 16, 2019

I've got a 2017 Cruze LT RS...and I also commute 180 miles a day, 5 days a week. That's about 45k miles a year. That being said, I'm not exactly car savvy and my dealer is hit or miss in terms of maintenance recommendations.

I'm at 66k now and I last did a bigger maintenance run at 45k (basic level, transmission fluid change, etc). My manual says to replace the spark plugs at 60k.

If I want this beauty to last until I pay her off (another 4 years and 150k or more miles) should I be preparing for some epic maintenance or just keep steady on timely oil changes and follow the manual?

Thanks in advance for anyone who comments in on this.

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obermd

· #41 · Jan 19, 2019 (Edited)

jblackburn said:
Just curious - what is the impact of the Volt on your monthly power bill ($)? We have electric heat and our power bill is stupid high.

Unfortunately very hard to tell because our electric company replaced our meters the month before I bought my Volt and everybody's electric bills went up by 20-30 dollars a month. My bill has gone up about 40 dollars a month since the meter change. However, I estimated it's about $45 a month if I do all my charging at home. But since I do half my charging at work for free the actual impact on my electric bill has been no more than $25 a month. I estimated the $45 impact by monitoring my KWh usage in the Volt, adding 10% for charging losses, and then multiplying by the 12.31 cents per KWh. That said, when I included maintenance and tire wear I was paying over $120 per month to commute in my Cruze. In my Volt it's slightly less than $40 per month, which includes the $900 I just spent on tires. My commute hasn't changed.

I haven't stopped for gas since Sep 30, driving 4,700 miles and burning a little less than 6.5 gallons of gas.

The other day I pulled up my vehicle operating costs sheet for the Cruze and compared them to the Volt. In the first 35K miles the Volt has been $2,400 cheaper to operate.

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obermd

· #42 · Jan 19, 2019

Barry Allen said:
Electricity costs depend on where you live and who you can buy from, but 12¢ per kWh is high. That's HIGH. Where I live it's 5¢ per kWh with my city's electricity aggregation program that I didn't opt out of because the rates are about as low as you can get.

The national average is 12.8 cents per KWh. Those living on the east coast from Virginia and north pay up to 30 cents per KWh, which at today's gas prices puts EVs on par with ICE vehicles for per-mile costs.

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Barry Allen

· #43 · Jan 19, 2019

Ma v e n said:
There's only a tad more than 2 months til the credit halves,, that's why I went with the lower number, and later this year it halves again, and in a bit over a year it'll be gone. You could get a stripped Bolt, or you may be stuck with a loaded $44k version.
I can go down the street right now and purchase one of probably 10 Cruze LS for $16,500. Or I could get a Premier for less than $25k. My RS Redline Hatch was $19000. $.12/kwh is national average. It may be high, but $2.75 is too, there's 15 states were regular is $2.0X or less, national average is only $2.24 currently. And much of the service bill could EASILY be notably lower. I tried to pick fair numbers in both directions. And an all highway Cruze could potentially beat 35mpg by a notable margin as well.

The point is if you don't have "free" electricity, the Bolt isn't a money saver. One should really question whether free electricity is sustainable or desirable, we didn't even touch on what happens when you brake down 200 miles from the nearest Bolt certified shop...Or the fact that most significant Bolt accidents result in a total loss, or the fact that if you've gotta go out of pocket for EV system repairs that you could be easily dropping $12-15k. And of course it eventually comes back to....I think it's ugly and wouldnt pay for one. Neither would many other people....As evinced by it's sales.

I totally agree with you on the price. As I mentioned, I'd love to have a Bolt EV. The three biggest factors prevented me from buying: 1) Purchase price; 2) No tax credit for me, and; 3) I don't drive enough to make it worth it.

If technology had advanced enough to where I could get a Bolt EV for the same price I paid for my Cruze ($19,170), I'd have the Bolt EV right now. I'd be charging for free at my workplace and never paying for fuel (electricity) in my budget unless I drove somewhere on a longer-distance trip.

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Barry Allen

· #44 · Jan 19, 2019

obermd said:
The national average is 12.8 cents per KWh. Those living on the east coast from Virginia and north pay up to 30 cents per KWh, which at today's gas prices puts EVs on par with ICE vehicles for per-mile costs.

That's terrible to pay that much for electricity. It's uber-cheap where I live and we don't even have hydropower like is available many places. Electricity is cheap enough to install electric heat as an easy option instead of fossil fuels. My parents did a large remodel of their house to expand into a master bedroom & bathroom and instead of doing a bunch of ductwork that probably wouldn't work anyway with the furnace being undersized for the new addition, they installed a pair of electric baseboard heater (one in the bedroom and one in the kickboard of the bathroom) and some under-tile heating in the bathroom as a luxury. The electric bill went up basically nothing huge in the winter months and it allows them to keep the bedroom warmer at night while they turn down the furnace in the rest of the house with a programmable thermostat: 55 degrees at night and it kicks back up to 68 about 30 minutes before they wake up.

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Ma v e n

· #45 · Jan 19, 2019

My electric was 12.49c from August to December, and this month just dropped to 12.35c. Signing up for a 36 month plan would enable you access to about 11.5c.

There are ChargePoint public station at a Kohl's 35miles away, and a bank of half a dozen or so 6.6kw chargers in Atlantic City. Besides those the only others in my area(a 50 mile drive within NJ)are the ones installed at dealerships. The BMW dealer would likely get real pissy if I started charging my Bolt there, read that as I might be able to do it once, and hopefully find something to do for a couple hours while it charges before I got banned from.Group1 automotive properties LOL

And installing solar panels and a battery Bank to do it the job "free" wouldn't work either. You can't get "free" solar installed in my area unless the array produces less than 105% of your average usage.

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