[Lucky1]

Hi, I'm on the verge of possibly relocating to Florida and taking on a project that will require me to travel and incur 27,000 miles annually on my car.

I'm bringing my daily E90 M3 6MT as well as my weekenders, Z4M Roadster and 911 Carrera 4S (991.1) 7MT.

My original plan was to just suck it up and drive the E90 until the engine blows (300,000+ miles?), and either replace the engine or the car itself. It currently has 73,160 miles on it.

Lately also wondering if there's a business case to get a used EV on a cheap monthly finance, like an Hyundai Ioniq 6 and pay FPL's $38 a month free charger install, free overnight charging and spare the E90 the mileage. I would have to pay extra on insurance for it too of course, but the monthly savings in fuel would be significant by my quick math.

I'm going to dive deeper into the math but I thought I'd talk to my fellow Bimmerposters, and beyond the E9x dedicated M3 forum, to see what they do. I know a lot of people look at the E9x as a weekender, and I appreciate that, but right now for better or worse its been my daily. I love driving it, its a fantastic all around car, serves its purpose as the ultimate family sedan that's also a manual sports car. I haven't been shy about putting miles on it up to now, but this is a lot of miles. Still, its meant to be driven (though fuel, oil and tire costs are certainly going to be not much fun).

Other ideas were to buy some cheap $10k commuter fuel sippers and continually buy and resell at the same price or similar if possible jumping from car to car. What would you guys do?

[nazali]

some quick maths

@27k/year
your on 73,160km
it will take 226,840km to get to 300k, when your engine blows up
thats 8 years time....

questions

1> are your going to be there for 8 years
(you'd need to be there more than 8 years as your engine wont grenade at exactly 300k)

2>y r u expecting your engine to grenade at 300k or at all, as a senior forum member I assume you have some sense on BMW's what to do not to do maintain, your not a noob so why should it grenade?

3> do you not consider your e90 not to be a daily driver, and average KM's is around 20-25k, so regardless of where you live TO or FLA, your going ot possibl;y do 20k a year anyway

4> why am I asking these questions

5> are you relocating for good ?

6> What are your hobbies?

7>What is your favorite food

8> What is your favorite TV show

As a Canuk, I'd not wanna be stepping into the US of A at the moment.
Heck were not even buying there ketchup were buying Frenchies

First word is Boy, 2nd is Cott

[nazali]

pro-tip driving in Floridah

Many areas have a high number of pedestrians, especially near tourist spots, so be vigilant when approaching crosswalks.

[nazali]

Oh just be careful with speeding, especially with Canadian plates.
You do not want to interact with American cops.
Though I expect you'd best wanna get US plates long term

[FC4]

If you're going to be in a car for 3+ hours in a car every single workday, I fail to see a reason why your top priority is not luxury and comfort. I'd dread waking up every morning if I had to spend most of my waking hours in a 3-Series or some cheap commuter car while my "nicer" car sits in the garage.

I'd get an S-Class, Lexus LS, or Range Rover.

[Lucky1]

Originally Posted by FC4

If you're going to be in a car for 3+ hours in a car every single workday, I fail to see a reason why your top priority is not luxury and comfort. I'd dread waking up every morning if I had to spend most of my waking hours in a 3-Series or some cheap commuter car while my "nicer" car sits in the garage.

I'd get an S-Class, Lexus LS, or Range Rover.

Thanks. Funny enough I think the E90 M3 is the most comfortable car I’ve ever owned (seats and suspension are fabulous together).

This is about whether its possible to both how to save money or break even moneywise in short or long term vs piling mileage on the car (which I do sort of scratch my head and ask myself why I actually care).

[vt100]

Originally Posted by Lucky1

Other ideas were to buy some cheap $10k commuter fuel sippers and continually buy and resell at the same price or similar if possible jumping from car to car. What would you guys do?

My daily commute is >100miles. I used to drive my Z4MC for half of the week (and another half 4Runner) to work for few years. But always felt bad putting so many miles on either of them. And even more I felt sick at gas stations filling them up twice a week

Now got Honda CR-Z with manual and can't be more happy It's a surprisingly fun to drive little car and (if I'm in the mood) it can give me up to 45mpg
And I got it with 45kmiles just for $8k.

[dreamingat30fps]

Most of the good EV deals are on leases and you wouldn't be able to do that with your mileage. A cheap used maybe, depends on your ability to charge at home and how far you will drive each day. Also don't trust anything FPL is selling, they are full of shit and pretty much everything they offer is a bad deal.

Honestly my guess would be that if saving money is the goal then just driving the E90 you already have would be the best. MAYBE buying some super cheap economy car that gets significantly better gas mileage than the E90 could be cheaper, but then you have to drive that for 27k miles a year.

[vt100]

Originally Posted by dreamingat30fps

Most of the good EV deals are on leases and you wouldn't be able to do that with your mileage.

With 27kmiles/year it's about 100miles/day.
With that in mind and accounting for Florida's heat (so AC is always on plus battery cooling) only Tesla would be a more less reliable commuter it seems to me. In any other I'd die from range anxiety
But that's neither cheap nor driver friendly (with all controls done through the touchscreen) IMO

[afadeev]

Originally Posted by Lucky1

Hi, I'm on the verge of possibly relocating to Florida and taking on a project that will require me to travel and incur 27,000 miles annually on my car.

I'm bringing my daily E90 M3 6MT as well as my weekenders, Z4M Roadster and 911 Carrera 4S (991.1) 7MT.

[...]Lately also wondering if there's a business case to get a used EV on a cheap monthly finance, like an Hyundai Ioniq 6 and pay FPL's $38 a month free charger install, free overnight charging and spare the E90 the mileage. I would have to pay extra on insurance for it too of course, but the monthly savings in fuel would be significant by my quick math.

Your math is not wrong.
My rough calculations show annual savings of $3.2-3.6K (depending on specific electricity and gas price points). That ~$300/month is enough to cover the cost of leasing a new Model 3 RWD, although you will chew through mileage limits in a hurry. So consider buying used. You can grab a mint 2-3 year old used Model 3 RWD/AWD for ~$25K these days, including directly from Tesla.

Model 3's make for excellent commuter vehicles. FSD isn't perfect, but better than the alternatives. Even with out FSD, basic AP (auto-pilot) does make things much easier in stop-and-go traffic.
You will absolutely want to get an L2 charger for your home/work place, as that's the only way to get access to reasonable electricity rates.
Avoid Tesla (and other commercial) SuperChargers, as those are priced roughly to parity with gas prices per mile at ~$0.45+0.65/KWh, or roughly 4x what you would pay for electricity at home.

HTH,
a

[MJBO]

I think Hammond did a great job of summarising a daily:

Save the fun cars for the weekend, and have your best car as a daily. For me at the moment that's my G81, the AM V8 Vantage manual roadster is for the weekend.

As for your idea to buy cheap s***ers to spend the majority of your driving life, screw that.

[tturedraider]

Here’s the easy answer. You have an E90 M3 with only 73,000 miles. Don’t screw that up!!!!! Get another car to put the miles on!!!!! I hate EVs, so I would probably get some kind of “beater”. But, if an be EV works for you that might be okay. I would have a hard time giving up an M3 to drive a non-BMW. Maybe consider an F30 330i?


This guy is in NY and has had his car for sale forever. He hasn’t had it overpriced and from what I can tell it’s in good condition, so I have no idea why it hasn’t sold. It’s very well equipped. You might want to check it out.
https://f30.bimmerpost.com/forums/sh....php?t=2018366

[Efthreeoh]

Having driven my 325i E90 MT Sport package for over 400,000 miles under a similar use case, which started as 35,000 miles annually then shared with a 2008 Z4 Coupe and then for a short 2 year period with a E46 Cabrio (3 cars in rotation) during a 13-year stint that ended in December 2021, I have some insights.

I think using your quite fresh E90 M3, given it's mileage at its advanced age, is a bad use case for it. An M3 will hold its value and at the end (you say 300,000 miles) will not be economically worth rebuilding. The E90 chassis is more than capable of enduring 27,000 miles annually, but a E90 M3 is not the right version. My base model 325i with an N52 is the correct version to turn into a beater.

Now the other side of this is you. Driving 27,000 miles a year is no picnic. It's tedious. You have two other great "weekend cars". Yeah, except the last thing you'll want to do after driving all week is drive on the weekend. There is no one on the planet who likes to drive more than I do, but I rarely drove on the weekends during that 13 years. I still did "driving vacations" because my wife likes to ride all day in cars (it's why we're still married), but I'd have preferred to just stay my ass at home. After stopping that commute and my butt finally got back to normal (no shit, it took over a year), what I realized, even driving some great BMWs, is I became numb to pleasure of driving a BMW. Just recently I've come back to really now feeling how special driving a 3-series is. I lost the ability to feel it long ago. I've been driving a 3-series for just over 35 years now. For 13 years of that time I might have well been driving a Civic because I became numb to driving.

I live in the mountains in Virginia and commuted to N. Virginia every day (even during COVID), so I got to drive every day about 80 miles a day on track-level back roads in the mountains. You'll be doing your stint in Florida, which has no real roads to enjoy.

Get an Accord. And get battery tenders for your other cars because they are going to sit. And figure out your rodent abatement strategy.