No. Do not pay extra for maintenance.

1. Maintenance is minimal in the i4. (First intervals is 24 months! ) The bill for mine was @ $260, comped by BMW, and far, far below the cost of a maintenance plan.
2. Maintenance is covered in many lease contracts. It's their car, so they maintain it, or at least that'sthe deal in my wife's Ariya.

 

2. Maintenance is covered in many lease contracts. It's their car, so they maintain it, or at least that'sthe deal in my wife's Ariya.

Having leased cars for the last 25 years not once did maintenance come included. It was always an add-on. How expensive and what the add-on covered was variable. On an EV I wouldn't pay for it. Tire protection yes but not maintenance.

 

Even if you plan on keeping the car past the lease period, most likely it's not going to be worth the extra cost. BMWs in USA get free scheduled maintenance for the first 3 years or 36K miles which ever comes first. Also most likely, your highest cost during the lease period will be tires. I know it has been mine for the past 28months.

 

I’m at 30k miles, and any of the packages or add-ons that were offered to me would have been a complete waste. The car hasn’t needed anything except tires.

 

The only one that tempts me at all is the tire/wheel coverage given we are harder on our cars up here given the dirt roads and mountain driving than we were outside the city. Not worried about any of the rest of it.

 

BMWs in USA get free scheduled maintenance for the first 3 years or 36K miles which ever comes first.

Service is every 2 years so in reality you only get 1x 2 year service under warranty. I guess you get 3 years of remote battery replacements.

The car didn't need anything except tires.

Preach! I just replaced my rear tires due to road debre, but they needed replacing soon anyways (3/32). First expense on the car.

The only one that tempts me at all is the tire/wheel coverage

I find these coverage plans more headache than they are worth. Something happens then you fill out claims... no thanks. It really always depends on the price. I'd call and ask for the prices of the options before you're sitting in the finance office and trying to make a decision on the fly. Get the info ahead if you want to make an informed decision.

In 30 years of driving, I never got a curb rash until this car. But I’m in a new town with square curbs vs round found everywhere else I’ve lived. I've already scraped both rear rims badly and have had 2 flat tires that required new tires. So I wish I got the coverage this time, but I think you're always better off without it. They know on average you don't need tires or rims to be fixed.

 

Service is every 2 years so in reality you only get 1x 2 year service under warranty. I guess you get 3 years of remote battery replacements.

Preach! I just replaced my rear tires due to road debre, but they needed replacing soon anyways (3/32). First expense on the car.

I find these coverage plans more headache than they are worth. Something happens then you fill out claims... no thanks. It really always depends on the price. I'd call and ask for the prices of the options before you're sitting in the finance office and trying to make a decision on the fly. Get the info ahead if you want to make an informed decision.

In 30 years of driving, I never got a curb rash until this car. But I’m in a new town with square curbs vs round found everywhere else I’ve lived. I've already scraped both rear rims badly and have had 2 flat tires that required new tires. So I wish I got the coverage this time, but I think you're always better off without it. They know on average you don't need tires or rims to be fixed.

And the kicker is that the 'basic' T&W coverage only covers "hazard" damage so you have to buy yet another layer of coverage to get the rims covered against driver error. I think I will just plan to find someone who can do the work locally if/when I need to have it done. $2300 or whatever they are charging for the coverage is over the top.

 

The Aero wheel/rims on my old model 3 were curb rash magnets. Hoping the park assist pro helps me to keep the new i4 rims in good shape.

 

Nothing is worth $2,300. I got the tire package on my motorcycle. It was $350. I made out with 2 rear tires at $250 each. But at $2,300... that is just a rip off. You hear about the times when people make money off the coverage plans and you hear the extreme cases like mine where someone should have gotten the coverage, but you never hear the 99% majority that get these plans and never use it once. Even me in 30 years, I should have gotten it once. Overall I'm ahead by not getting it.

 

i guess I made it clear on the phone I wasn’t interested and I didn’t even see the finance guy when I picked up my car today 😂

 

No pics?

 

Didn’t get home till after dark last night, but will take some today!

 

I must have told my sales guy I wasn't interested in add-on coverage a dozen times, yet still I was stuck in that finance office for hours while they tried to convince me otherwise.

 

Sounds like my experience except it was the finance gal that had to go over all the optional add ons.

 

F & I guys are just the worst. You can safely assume that everything they push is a bad deal for you.

My guy would only shut up once I told him that whether we were done or not, I was leaving his office in ten minutes. It was also amusing that the only product he could realistically sell for an EV was the ridiculously overpriced tire and rim package, which at $2,500 was an easy "no". He did try to push a maintenance contract for about 30 seconds, even though it was obvious that even he knew how silly the idea was. I guess you miss 100% of the shots you don't take, lol – I'm sure somebody will eventually fall for it.

 

Oh, there are a few folks on the forum that sprung for the extended maintenance program, not understanding how bad a deal it was.

 

I know we’re mostly in agreement that the maintenance plan doesn’t make much sense in an EV, but how about the extended warranties? That’s where I’m curious over the next year as the cars continue to age and I near 36k miles around then.

 

I know we’re mostly in agreement that the maintenance plan doesn’t make much sense in an EV, but how about the extended warranties?

Maintenance plan doesn't make sense in an ICE car either. In my 15 years driving my Accord, I average less than $100 per year on Maintenance. $75 a year on oil changes and the rest is small stuff like wipers and fluids. The biggest expenses are new tires, next is brakes. But these plans never cover that stuff. With the exception of oil changes, I don't see EVs being any different in cost. They still have brake fluid changes, washer fluid, wipers, etc. Everyone states things like spark plugs but how often do you change spark plugs, once in the vehicle's life? (unless it is an Audi, then every year)

They didn't offer me an extended warranty for EVs. They offered an ICE extended warranty on an EV. I would be interested if it was cheap and from BMW not a 3rd party. I'm worried about the A/C and cooling systems, things that are on ICE cars but were redesigned for the i4. Not worried about the battery or motor...it's everything else.

 

I don't see why maintenance cannot be performed at any shop. My 2 year maintenance was just a brake fluid flush. Any discount auto repair shop can do that. I've done it on my previous cars. Nothing special because it is an EV. $15 in materials and $125 for 1 hour of labor. It should be less than $150 every 2 years.

 

The finance gal wouldn’t go past 60,000 miles on any extended warranty from the dealership and since mine is already 4 years / 50,000 miles (and 8 years 100,000 miles for the batteries) it didn’t make sense for me, but to each his own. I drive more than the average 15k miles a year, you drive less.

 

Ooh.

I might make you mad at her, then.
7 years, 75,000 miles, Platinum Electric, and the Obligor is BMW of North America, LLC, so it's not a third party offering. It was $5350, so it wasn't exactly cheap, but August 2029 was also a LONG time away from 2022. I'm at 12,500 now at 29 months, so WELL on track for this to expire on time, not miles.

 

5 year warranty?? Everything I’ve read says 4.

So RollerMonkey is getting an additional 3 years. (And yeah, I suppose closer to $1,800 a year rather than ‘just over $1k’.)

 

Does that $5,350 include tax? (Perhaps a silly question for some, but we have no sales tax in Oregon, so just curious.)

$5,350 for 36 months is $149/month, or just about my insurance premium. Seems reasonable for a different kind of insurance, I suppose.

 

It is above the sales tax line, so yes, there's tax in WA, but it's also above the trade-in line. I reduced my sales tax basis by the $55,000 that they gave me for the TM3, so my sales tax out the door was under a thousand bucks.