As for charging, this last weekend was the first time I've ever had a problem finding a charger on 300 mile days. Most people I know don't even go on as many long drives as I do, as I enjoy driving for driving sake.
I have zero plans on gasoline ever again.
Hybrids are well tested technology. Both Toyota and Honda have been producing hybrids for over 20-25 years now. We had a Prius that worked flawlessly for over 250K miles, before it had to be retired when its catalytic converter was stolen.
With the generally accepted drive train (pioneered by Toyota, and adopted by everyone else), there's two electric motors instead of one, but the gearing between the engine, the two motors, and the output shaft is fixed. There's no transmission actuators to break (other than the park pawl, but that's pretty simple). You can still have problems of course, Ford messed up something on early HF35 transmissions and many of them have bearings fail, leading to a short service life (mine was covered under warranty, so now I've got a new transmission).
This article covers well (Japanese but figures are English so not block machine translation). https://anopara.net/2016/03/11/%E5%90%84%E7%A4%BE%E3%81%AE%E...
Looks like Hyundai/Kia aren't though. And I wasn't able to get a good read on a lot of them. I guess I over generalized from Toyota, Honda, Ford, and Chrysler.
[1] https://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/a15121345/honda-accord-...
A three axis machine is a triangle. Think three linkages pinned. Not very interesting. But a four axis machine is a simple gear train like you have with most battery powered cars. A five axis machine requires two inputs to define the motion of the remaining free axis. Far as I can tell that's what the original Toyota's used. Engine + Motor1 on one input. M2 on the ring gear. Drive shaft is the remaining.
Lot of different ways to skin that cat and they can look mechanically very different.
Not having to withstand thousands of explosions per minute (whatever RPM the engine is turning at, times the number of pistons in the engine) as a requirement is an extreme advantage.
Hell, I bought a lawn mower that had a 5 year warranty that the mower would start on the first pull.
And either way, the issue isn't just with the engine-- having an ICE means you need to make a bunch of design choices you wouldn't otherwise have made, you're forced to use certain materials over others, you're forced to account for all sorts of material stress and vibrations, your centre of mass is quite high, you have a lot of weight on the front tires, etc etc. All of these other problems more or less come with the engine.
There's also transmission and gearbox design, etc.
Those are the exceptions that prove the rule. They are rare and more indicators of process failures than some fundamental engineering problem.
The reason most dealerships don't want to sell EVs is that they make most of their income from servicing the cars.
I'm not saying mechanics will go obsolete, but you're not going to see nearly as many of them. There's simply less to go wrong. I'm sure that something that goes wrong will be on the order of 10k~ :D.
I don't have it at hand, but there was a picture of the frame containing non-drive train components for the Model S, and it was maybe 2ft by 2ft.
A peek at the front of a model S skateboard: https://i.pinimg.com/736x/df/d1/50/dfd15057c8b5a4d129e91ec3b...
After that, wear and tear takes its toll. I live in the northeast, where salt and other factors takes you to the lower end. As an example, I drove a 2003 Honda Pilot for 260k miles. I made the decision to get rid of it as the suspension and frame rust made repairs far in excess of the value of the car.
Electric cars are the classic capital vs operational expense discussion. More expensive to buy, sometimes cheaper to own.
[1] https://www.iseecars.com/longest-lasting-cars-study#v=2022
For reference, I could still drive the car after the crash just barely. It would’ve been a lot of work to fix but on a 50k car, it might’ve been worth it. On a 5k car? No.
Cars typically have pretty predictable depreciation schedule but after you hit a certain point the car could be worth anywhere from scrap value to a few thousand dollars. Few banks are going to write a loan for a 10 year old car, insurance valuations may not cover the loan value in the event of loss and few qualified customers are in the market for an old car.
As a result, you’re limited to cash buyers and parts buyers. Cars that meet whatever the cash buyers value are worth a lot. Even minor variances from whatever the car/truck guys want will take the value from $5-7k to scrap.
State regulations have an impact as well. In New York, all check engine light issues make inspection/registration a no-go. Many repairs exceed the value of a new car. In a place where the state doesn’t do inspections, you can run a beater longer. That circles back to the finance issue - banks won’t write loans for cars that may be pulled off the road.
Minus gasoline volatility. (volatility has a price, just ask wall street options dealers) Minus repairs. Minus damage to environment.
And batteries.
I'm not claiming for a second that the cadence of swapping batteries is going to be anything like all the consumable filters and gaskets, transmissions, bearings, etc but when the day comes to replace seven thousand 18650 cells in one go, it's going to sting.
On the plus side, that's another 15y on the road.
This is effectively my setup. Got an SUV for all those bigger, longer hauls, and a little 60-90 mile range VW eGolf for "around the town" trips.
This weekend we used the SUV and filled up for the first time in about 1-1.5 months and couldn't believe my eyes when I saw $75 after the pump stopped.
Unfortunately, I just don't feel comfortable without having a fuel based option in the garage. Although the new F-150 lightning with range-extender (only a patent atm) and a price drop (yeah right) might convince me otherwise.