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How much fuel money I saved using my Kona EV for 80,000 km vs a Creta

9th June 2022, 12:45 by Utkarsh Chaudhary

I hope the detailed cost of ownership of my Hyundai would help people understand the economics of owning an electric car over the long term.

BHPian ADI7YAK recently shared this with other enthusiasts.

Kona Electric at 80,000 km - Cost of ownership

Greetings everyone! I have owned my Kona Electric for a little over 20 months and it recently completed 80 thousand kilometers. Here's a detailed cost breakup of owning and maintaining the car and a rough calculation of how much money I have saved compared to a petrol automatic and a diesel automatic car of a similar size and price.

My aim is to keep this thread precise and update it with upcoming milestones as they come by. I hope this helps people understand the economics of owning an EV over the long term and helps people who are uncertain about making the switch.

Starting with an overview which provides key facts about the usage of the car.

Total of almost 11 megawatts was used to drive 80k km for a total cost of Rs. 91480. This includes both home charging as well as public charging.
Charging at public charging stations is twice as expensive. Understandably though since they are much faster and push way more energy into the battery than the home charger.

Few more interesting insights

Total cost of maintaining the car, which includes regular service and other wear and tear items such as wiper blades, bulbs, etc comes to around Rs. 18500. Quite cheap in my opinion.
Running cost comes to a little over Re 1/km. There is a slight error in this figure since home charging is billed every month, but I have tried to minimize the error since the billing cycle starts from the 7th day of each month.
Highest expense so far is for tyres. Mine wore out within 50k km. I blame it on the 400Nm of torque coupled with front-wheel drive and my right foot.
90% of the charging is done at home while the remaining 10% is done at public charging stations. These include operators such as Tata Power, Fortum, Statiq, ChargeZone, etc.

Monthly home charging bills

Do note that from October 2020 till December 2020 are my rough estimates since the car was being charged from the home meter. Afterwards, I got a dedicated meter with Rs. 7.5/unit all-inclusive flat tariff (compared to slab tariff of a normal domestic meter)
Unusual dip in the average rate of April 2022 is unexplained and I'd rather let it be.

Breakup of maintenance costs

Regular servicing usually costs Rs. 2.6k and only includes labour charges unless there is a part to be changed such as the air filter in March 2022 or a small cornering light bulb which went kaput in June 2022.
There was a manufacturing defect in the factory provided "Nexen" branded tyre which was replaced under warranty. In fact, three of the tyres were replaced. One burst after hitting a pothole and the other two had bulges.
Two of the steering bolts were replaced under warranty quite early in the ownership.
As stated above, the highest expense so far is tyre replacement which had cost a whopping Rs. 48k.
Battery was replaced under warranty at around 65k km. This move came since a couple of cars in Canada and South Korea caught fire while charging and hence almost all cars globally were recalled and fitted with new batteries. Good for me though.
Other items under "repairs" include denting (a coconut fell on the car) and wheel well plastic liner which broke and was replaced for Rs. 4.4k (exclusive of GST).