Plus, your "motor" isn't an engine, it's not variable speed, it only has one "hardness" that it works at. It might push less air with the thicker filter, but it's not going to ramp up and consume more wattage or anything like that.
The problem is (especially with older furnaces; modern ones have safety features to prevent this) that if you have too much back-pressure you don't get enough airflow over the heat exchanger (or air conditioner coils) and it can crack - allowing dangerous exhaust gasses into the airflow (or freezing the coils for the AC which isn't as bad).
Once the heat exchanger is gone the furnace is basically trash and has to be replaced (you can replace the heat exchanger but it's rarely worth it).
An everyday way in which people induce this scenario is by shutting the heating vents in particular rooms because they get too hot. Even on the newer furnaces, this results in the automatic controls shutting off the burner when the pressure and temperature gets too high, and then the fan starts pushing around cold air.
A secondary negative effect of this is that it pressurizes the ducts causes them to leak more, resulting in reduced efficiency, and also quicker failure.
A well designed system which has been configured to deliver the correct amount of heat to each room doesn't experience the same issues. Unfortunately, most older homes and even newer production built homes have poorly designed HVAC systems.
Heat pumps don't experience as many of these issues because they just don't get air as hot, and instead rely on higher throughput of lower temperature air to heat spaces, but that makes them far more reliant on good duct system design.
Many newer AC motors are variable speed or at least multi-speed.
This is incorrect - electric motors draw more current when under load. I would suggest researching this or playing with some toy electric motors run from a battery through a current meter.
Sure, some motors have characteristics that can be tweaked to run at different work loads either with PWM, or allowing them to pull more amps to drive higher loads. Hell, you can even overvolt them and make them actually work harder.
That's not how HVACs work though. Have you ever opened one up and did a repair? The circuitry is dead simple, there's no current limiting setup or PWM to control how much the motor is pulling or spinning, there's no CFM measuring device to give the motor more volts or a higher amp limit.
The motor is simply pushing air. Air isn't something like a solid load where a motor might lift something or move a lever or gear, it's fluid. The motor is going to run at max and be done.
Back pressure doesn't impact the load of a fan motor, at least not as the scale we see in HVACs, we're not making vacuum chambers.
Anyway at the end of the day I agree with the original characterization of wear and tear - motor and blower will probably outlast most other components. In the case of the one I mentioned this seemed to be true. You just may end up paying a little more for the electricity to run it.
Apologies for the tone!
> Have you ever opened one up and did a repair?
Well funny you should ask, but yes! Two times. One time, a power relay on the control module shorted and blew a hole in the circuit board. Had to replace the control module there. Another time, the start capacitor needed to be replaced on the giant 2KW squirrel cage motor. I removed the blower, disassembled it, lubricated moving parts, and of course tested it out on a stand. That much blowing power is quite impressive when right next to your face.
Which is a true statement but incomplete and therefore misleading. A fan motor is under the highest load when it is doing the most work. That is, moving the MOST air. If you restrict airflow (e.g. with a dirty filter), the motor is under less load and draws LESS current. A lot of people get this wrong because it's counter-intuitive on the surface of it.
You can test this very easily with a box fan and a kill-a-watt. Turn the fan on High in the center of the room and read the power. Now move it against the wall. You will hear the fan get louder because it is spinning faster, because it's doing LESS work. The meter will also show less power being drawn.
It is true that a dirty filter restricts airflow through the whole HVAC system. This extends the system's "on" cycle, which reduces the whole system's efficiency. But the popular claim that a dirty filter will burn out the motor is bunk.