2.4.3. Insurance and Maintenance Costs

Insurance costs depend on vehicle type and selection, so a fixed cost of 5% of the initial vehicle price was initially assigned as in [5]. However, a recent study concluded that insurance rates for EVs are generally 21% higher, due to the higher repair costs [27], congruent with previous research [48]. To account for this factor, insurance rates for BEVs and PHEVs were inflated to 6% of the initial vehicle cost and assigned monthly.

In step O, maintenance costs for BEV, hybrid, and gasoline vehicles are estimated. The consensus from the literatures is that EVs are cheaper to maintain than ICEVs [21]. From [28,49], EVs average about 3.5 cents per mile for maintenance compared to 6 cents per mile for hybrids. As PHEVs include both traditional gasoline engines, as well as BEV components, they may experience the maintenance profile of ICEVs, although some less conservative studies have argued that maintenance is less expensive [50]. Given the paucity of data, PHEV and EV's are assigned maintenance costs of an average of 3.5 cents per mile while NPHEVs and ICEVs are assumed to experience an average of 6 cents per mile. These values are used as the center for triangular distributions with minimum and maximum set at ±2 cents from the center values.
