Also, most of the parts of a car that wear out are shared between EV and ICE. Modern ICE drivetrains rarely break and routinely last the lifetime of the car.
Things that break on ICE vehicles commonly EVs don’t have: * fanbelts * flywheels * alternators * starters * spark plugs * transmissions * etc
In practice, Teslas break most when other drivers hit them.
> In practice, Teslas break most when other drivers hit them.
Have you been to a service center? They're packed, especially when compared to Tesla's market penetration. And none of the cars I saw there were wrecked. Just broken.
Tesla cars will most likely last about the same length of time as a current ICE vehicle, because what mostly kills vehicles is body rot. I'm even open to the argument that Teslas will have lower average lifespan, to be honest, due to the rate of change in the EV marketplace.
Service centers are packed because there aren’t enough of them. If you look at the ratio of service centers to teslas on the road you’ll see the problem rather starkly… there aren’t enough of them.
Tesla supplants this problem by heavily leaning on mobile service, which is awesome, but fundamentally, the service org has scaled at maybe 20-30% the speed of the manufacturing org.
I’ve personally owned 3 Toyotas with over 150k miles on them with very little maintenance. One of them was from 1994. One(my wife’s current car) has almost 200k on it.
Do you have a Toyota with higher than 300k miles on it? If not, why?
https://www.thedrive.com/tech/43592/heres-how-a-tesla-model-...
The tech in the Model 3s tends to be significantly better than these old model s cars mind you and they still hold up to 400,000+ miles. I bet you’d get an engine rebuild or two and maybe a new transmission or two after 400k miles on a gas car as well.
Gasoline car engines are more complex while that can in theory mean lesser reliability, we should also consider that they been around a lot longer , we have had a lot of time to develop manufacturing process and mature them .
Battery vehicles are very very fast evolving, also Tesla is not exactly known for well manufactured vehicles
Finally also the availability of know how and feasibility to fix a motor is lot harder than gasoline engines , there maybe a tendency to replace the motor than fix it because cheaper or easier for Tesla like how phones do it.
In fact there is a lawsuit for the corolla 4 cylinder from the mid 2000s(one of the Toyotas I've owned) because the odometer stops working at 300k miles/kilometers due to some bug: https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/some-toyota-models-...
Here you go. This driver has driven three of them over 300,000 miles:
https://www.torquenews.com/1083/driver-1-million-driven-priu...
Both cases where I sold my Toyota were because I was moving cross country and had to downsize to a single car, at least temporarily. We still have the other one.
https://evannex.com/blogs/news/7-myths-busted-after-200-000-...
https://enginepatrol.com/how-long-tesla-model-s-last/
https://electrek.co/2020/05/11/tesla-model-x-extreme-mileage... Note: Electrek is a Tesla fanboi blog that masquerades as news, but the facts are the facts
https://www.thedrive.com/tech/43592/heres-how-a-tesla-model-... Multiple references to teslas with 400,000+ miles
https://www.carscoops.com/2020/08/what-are-the-maintenance-c...
Etc.
Belts are maintenance parts, and are extremely unlikely to break if changed on schedule.
> flywheels
You would need a shaped charge warhead to break a flywheel.
> alternators and starters
Electric motors and servos exist in electric cars as well, to drive fans, pumps, brake servos, and so on.
> spark plugs
It is extremely rare for spark plugs on fuel injected engines to break, but they degrade and are cheap and easy to replace. Much easier than brake pads or tires.
> transmissions
Very rarely break, but the transmissions in electric cars share the same basic components.
> In practice, Teslas break most when other drivers hit them.
If this was true, it would mean teslas are babied and only used sparingly in forgiving environments. But there are still too few old teslas around to produce meaningful statistics about drive train/chassi failure modes, which usually happen much later in the cars lives. The oldest ones are essentially babied "boutique" individuals.
Maintenance changes on cars are: tires, brake pads, fluids (oil, cooling, hydraulics), and some belts, shock absorbers and suspension parts.
It is true that electric cars don't need oil changes.
As an example, the tesla model 3 warranty is 4 yr/50,000 mi basic, 8 yr/100,000 mi powertrain.
By comparison, the BMW M4 warranty is 4 yr/50,000 mi basic, 4 yr/50,000 mi powertrain.
Now the powertrain warranty being twice that of BMWs tells me they expect it to last at least that long. Perhaps I'm misreading something here?
The oldest teslas with the most miles are primarily taxis. I'm not sure I'd call a taxicab a "babied" vehicle.
Say that's required every 200k miles on average. Lot better than a 30k battery replacement.
But, the battery costs will continue to drop, so this will be interesting to see.