Arcimoto, the real thing? ($12k tandem EV trike, 70/130 mi. range)

[rmay635703]

Originally Posted by JSH

In VW's defense a lot of the long term unreliability of their cars comes for US buyers not doing the maintenance correctly and on schedule. There are a large number of US car owners that do nothing but oil changes until something breaks and even then they are likely to use the wrong oil because the correct oil costs more.
.

Having owned VWs the cost of maintenance by the book costs more than the car is worth around 100,000 miles.

I have never owned a bigger piece of garbage than a 2002 TDI

Everything including even the glovebox failed on that car by 120,000 miles and the automatic transmission was considered to be filled with “lifetime fluid” and was not possible to properly rebuild and started having lockup issues.

Everyone I know who owned VWs had the same experience that the constant maintenance was bleeding them dry.

Replacing the timing belt, water pump every 75,000, injection pump at 100,000, both fenders at 80,000 because the paint fell off, glovebox at 80k because the latch and strut failed, interior was worn and flaking off at 80,000, transmission was failing at 120,000, did the glow plugs twice by 120,000, the glow plug harness was failed, fuse box had to be tore apart and some sensors bypassed. The turbo had to be cleaned out every 2 years due to winter operation. (It would plug preventing the car from running), All 4 wheel ends and brake assemblies had to be replaced in their entirety due to play and coorsion.

And supposedly my year was “a good one”

VWs earn the seal of complete and total garbage, it’s very sad when a Dodge costs less to keep running than a VW that has all the crippling expensive mandatory maintenance done ahead of schedule and still ends up falling apart

[freebeard]

So you're saying some years were better than others?



I never oiled the door hinges and it ran just fine.

[rmay635703]

Originally Posted by freebeard

So you're saying some years were better than others?



I never oiled the door hinges and it ran just fine.

VW before 1992 was a different beast

The VW Rabbit Diesel Pickup was great, late 90’s through today bad.

[JSH]

Originally Posted by rmay635703

Having owned VWs the cost of maintenance by the book costs more than the car is worth around 100,000 miles.

I have never owned a bigger piece of garbage than a 2002 TDI

Total maintenance for my 2003 Jetta Wagon TDI was $8,560.62 for 10 years / 240K miles. That includes tires. I did the simple oil and filter changes myself and let the dealer do the timing belts. I also had them replace the water pump with each timing belt as the part was cheap compared to the 8 hours of labor to get to it if it failed. I sold it to a friend of the family and it is still going today - closing in on 500K miles.

Mechanically very little went wrong - the only thing I had to do outside of routine maintenance was replace the glow plug harness and a few glow plugs. I also had them clean the air intake every 100K when I had it in for the timing belt.

Now the interior was a different matter. I got rid of it because at about 200K miles the interior started coming apart. Broken glove box latch, center console latch, window regulators, fan resistor pack, sunroof leaked, etch.


Now my 2014 TDI would have been more. It had the DSG and the VW dealer wanted $600 every 40K miles to change the DSG oil. Still not even close to paying the cost of the vehicle in 100K miles considering it was a $30K vehicle.

I spent $2854.78 in maintenance in the 36,000 miles I owned it but almost half of that was tires. $837.92 for a set of snow tires and wheels, and $433.92 for a set of summer all-seasons.

[NeilBlanchard]

Arcimoto's faltering is quite sad - there had to be more than the former CEO's DUI and firing, I am assuming.

[freebeard]

My brother called to commiserate, and his question was why was the DUI a factor at all. I reminded him of Oregon's past governor, Bob Packwood, who was the first person I ever saw get 'cancelled'. In his case it took months. Now, with social media, people can be 'cancelled' overnight. Subsequent governors has been more and more similar ever since.

I'd put it to not solving the problem of hanging doors on a[n upper frame]. If it was replaced with cast aluminum parts that incorporate an actual door jamb, then the big Federal money would start raining down.

[redpoint5]

Originally Posted by JSH

Total maintenance for my 2003 Jetta Wagon TDI was $8,560.62 for 10 years / 240K miles. That includes tires. I did the simple oil and filter changes myself and let the dealer do the timing belts. I also had them replace the water pump with each timing belt as the part was cheap compared to the 8 hours of labor to get to it if it failed. I sold it to a friend of the family and it is still going today - closing in on 500K miles.

Mechanically very little went wrong - the only thing I had to do outside of routine maintenance was replace the glow plug harness and a few glow plugs. I also had them clean the air intake every 100K when I had it in for the timing belt.

Now the interior was a different matter. I got rid of it because at about 200K miles the interior started coming apart. Broken glove box latch, center console latch, window regulators, fan resistor pack, sunroof leaked, etch.

$8,560 is more in maintenance I've spent on all of my vehicles combined in 20 years of driving them. Of course, I do all my own maintenance, and I don't replace a failing cat, as an example.

I've never had a timing belt replaced on any of my vehicles. My '96 Legacy was supposed to get a new belt every 60k miles. I assume that had occurred at some point when I purchased it with 119k miles. During my ownership that went to 240k miles, I never replaced it. Non-interference engine.

These days I have no patience for a car that uses a timing belt. The Jetta had an interference engine, so timing belt replacement is not optional.

The ticky tacky failures really bother me on the truck. How can a blower resistor go bad? It's a passive component; making it last forever should be the simplest thing. I replaced the one in my truck from a junk yard pull. Zero excuse for those things going bad.

Originally Posted by NeilBlanchard

Arcimoto's faltering is quite sad - there had to be more than the former CEO's DUI and firing, I am assuming.

Main thing was lack of a profitable market for such a vehicle.

[JSH]

Originally Posted by NeilBlanchard

Arcimoto's faltering is quite sad - there had to be more than the former CEO's DUI and firing, I am assuming.

The business plan never made sense from the beginning.

Arcimoto built a factory they claimed could build 50,000 vehicles a year and then didn't even have retail orders for 1 a day.

The 2022 3rd quarter report said they made a grand total of 474 vehicles in the history of the company and 234 of them were "delivered" to the company not retail customers. For the 4th quarter they sold just 89 vehicles. Total 2022 retails sales were only 228.

Then there was the price. Realistically the Arcimoto is a $30,000 to $40,000 vehicle at a realistic sales volume. SEC filings showed they were losing more than $10K a vehicle just in cost of goods sold at the current $18,000 price. There was no way the advertised launch price of $12,000 was realistic. The base Polaris Ranger 590 sells for $12,500 and it is made from a company with a huge economy of scale. The gas Polaris Slingshot is $22K.

[JSH]

Originally Posted by redpoint5

$8,560 is more in maintenance I've spent on all of my vehicles combined in 20 years of driving them. Of course, I do all my own maintenance, and I don't replace a failing cat, as an example.

Questions:

1. Do you have an actual record for your maintenance for the last 20 years?
2. Does that include tires? ($1,974.76 of that total is just tires)
3. How many miles per year? (We averaged 24K a year with just that TDI)

And the other important consideration - by your own admission you skipped scheduled maintenance. $2,261.67 of that total is timing belts - which you decided not to do - and lucked out.

[redpoint5]

Originally Posted by JSH

Questions:

1. Do you have an actual record for your maintenance for the last 20 years?
2. Does that include tires? ($1,974.76 of that total is just tires)
3. How many miles per year? (We averaged 24K a year with just that TDI)

And the other important consideration - by your own admission you skipped scheduled maintenance. $2,261.67 of that total is timing belts - which you decided not to do - and lucked out.

I've got inconsistent records. I'd throw things into Excel after the fact, but I'm sure there's missing entries.

I'd have to look at how much I've spent on tires. Friends have given me sets of used tires before, so probably half my miles are either on free tires, or the ones that came on the vehicle. For instance, on the truck I ran the road tires it came with for a long time, then installed some used mudders my friend gave me, then bought 4x Firestone AT Revo back in the day for $750 installed. Put over 100k miles on the truck between those 3 sets of tires. Truck needs new tires but I don't want to spend any more on that hunk of junk.

Friend gave me winter tires on the Subaru, and I bought 4x new tires for $80 total once, 20 years ago.

I paid $500 to rebuild the front end of the truck once, which was the most I've spent in 1 shot on something.

The main thing is that we've been using a company car for long distance travel since 2017 when I changed jobs, so our vehicle costs are close to nothing the past 6 years.

More like I've spent less than $8k on vehicle maintenance between 2002 and 2017.

I drove a lot more when I was younger, but probably average 12k per year.