Maintaining My Electric Car
Electric cars need maintenance too - check out this guide to help you understand what maintenance is required for your lease car.
Every car needs to be maintained during a lease contract whether you decide to take out a maintenance package or pay for any maintenance needs yourself. This is no different to electric cars so make sure you understand what maintenance is required for your electric car before you get started with your lease.
What Maintenance Does An Electric Car Need?
There are considerably fewer parts in an electric car compared to a conventional petrol or diesel car so there are fewer parts to maintain. The essentials of electric car maintenance include:
- Due to battery degradation, every car battery has a warranty that ‘guarantees’ the battery’s lifespan. On average, electric car batteries will last roughly eight years or 100,000 miles.
- Don’t allow the battery to run out of power as this can cause the battery to rapidly deteriorate and therefore decrease its performance.
- Keep the battery charged between 20% and 80% as this improves the battery life. It is recommended to only charge the vehicle to full when taking long journeys.
- Electric cars use regenerative braking which converts the energy used for braking back into energy for the battery. This reduces the amount of wear and tear on the braking system. Some parts may still need to be replaced like the brake pads but this need is greatly reduced thanks to regenerative braking.
- The brake fluids (like on a conventional petrol or diesel car) will need replacing regularly to avoid it corroding the brake system.
- Keep windows closed when running the air conditioning to prevent overworking the system.
- Keep your car cleaned and dusted to prevent a build-up of bacteria and dirt inside the air conditioning
- Keep your coolant topped up because if the level gets too low, it will need to be drained completely and refilled by a technician – making it more expensive for you to maintain.
- Run the air-conditioning system weekly (ten minutes on the coolest setting) to reduce the chance of a problem developing with the compressor.
- Due to the heavy weight of the battery for an electric car, tyres can wear down faster than tyres on a petrol or diesel car. You should check the tyres on a regular basis for low tread, tears, delamination and other defects.
- Your electric car may come with specific tyres made for electric cars. These are designed to last longer but they are more expensive to replace than normal tyres. It is always recommended to understand what tyres your electric car has.
- Wiper blades are no different on an electric car to a petrol or diesel car. You should keep an eye on your blades and check them in case they are cracked, dry, misshapen or stiff.
Why Is Electric Car Maintenance Cheaper?
Electric car maintenance is considered to be a lot cheaper than petrol or diesel cars due to them having fewer parts and a regenerative braking system. Unlike a petrol car, an electric car doesn’t have a clutch, gearbox, exhaust or engine oil. With fewer parts that can go wrong, electric cars need fewer parts replaced over time. Maintenance costs can be as much as 50% less than a regular car.
As mentioned above, regenerative braking greatly reduces the wear and tear on your brakes. It makes them more efficient. They may still need replacing but on a lot less regular basis – saving you money.
Electric Car Maintenance Package with Willow
If you are worried about maintaining your electric lease car throughout your contract by yourself, we offer an electric car maintenance package across all of our electric cars. The maintenance package covers MOT testing, scheduled servicing, all repairs/replacement parts (unless due to driver error) and many other features. You will pay a set maintenance price on top of what you are paying for the car.
If you are interested in a maintenance package, you can select it on the car’s offer page or ask your sales consultant to provide you with a price once you have enquired.
Learn More About Electric Cars
If you want to learn more about electric cars, you can check out our other helpful guides below:
If you have any other questions about electric car maintenance that we haven’t covered in this guide, you can get in contact with our team – give us a call at 0354 350 3776, email us at enquiries@willowleasing.com or send us a message via our live chat service.