[garyrichardson]

As an electric car owner, the thought of paying for batteries and oil changes sounds terrible. I looked into the hybrid jeep to replace my aging one, but I know how much the maintenance on my gas beast is. I'll pay a premium to add a electic drive train and still have to take it back to the dealership every several months. Awful. I'll just wait for the fully electric version.

[gambiting]

I mean, that's a fair point, except that the pricing structure doesn't reflect the differences at all. Servicing a fully electric car should be cheaper, but in practice it just isn't. Servicing a PHEV should be more expensive but it also just isn't. A service of the E-Tron or the MB EQC costs the same as an equivalent ICE car even though there's hardly anything to do, and the service of my PHEV Volvo costs the same as the service of a regular ICE Volvo despite there being more to do.

So you might find that you'll get a fully electric Jeep but your servicing costs won't go down at all, it will still require an annual service to keep the warranty, and the dealer will almost certainly charge the same as for a normal one if not more(and I've seen dealers charge more, since EV cars can only be worked on by technicians trained to work on them, and there's comparatively fewer of them)

[garyrichardson]

I've got to disagree with you. I've got a Tesla. Maintenance costs going into 2 years have been tire rotations. I guess I'll see in years 3-5, but I have a VW of about the same vintage and it's required coolant system repairs (thankfully under warranty), oil and other fluid changes, brakes are coming up. I don't really expect to see anything like that in the Tesla unless there is suspension wear/tear and then eventually things like the power windows, etc.

Interesting that other car manufacturers are requiring maintenance of their electric cars. I haven't hear that before. Sounds like legacy businesses maintaining their legacy business models.