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Comment by geoffeg | Hacker News Reader

Don't forget that internal combustions engines lose power and efficiency over their lifetimes. Bearings, piston rings and other components wear, injectors and valves get dirty, surfaces develop varnish, etc. My last ICE car started needing a quart of oil every few months and that was with very good maintenance and not being driven hard.

I've been curious about how the degradation compares to EVs. I'm aware it's different kind of wear and that there's different ways to mitigate and repair EVs vs ICE, but they both have their own lifetimes and loss of performance.

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I believe the difference between ICE degradation and EV degradation is that the EV one actually affects the car's range.

While it is true that your car might consume more oil, and some other component might need replacing, its range, assuming it has been serviced properly, should be similar to what you could get out of it new.

I do wonder if the sum of the costs of getting the ICE car back to mint condition will be the same as getting some cells replaced so you get full range again.

> While it is true that your car might consume more oil, and some other component might need replacing, its range, assuming it has been serviced properly,

Well, until it dies completely (or to the point that servicing it would be more expensive to repair than replace). Then it's range abruptly drops to 0. We won't know for sure until we have more older EVs, but it may well be that EVs last much longer than that at 70-80% range. Which, especially if starting ranges increase, may be a very useful amount of range.

It's true we can't shake mainstream obsession with range, but I also think most people are a bit hesitant to take their 175,000 mile gasoline cars on long road trips. Not because of range, but because it just might break.

So old EVs can be just like old gas cars - used around town rather than for long road trips.

We road tripped our 2005 240K+ mile CR-V 750 miles each way every Christmas without a worry. We’d still be road-tripping in that if a negligent Subaru driver hadn’t rear-ended us and pushed us into a Prius ahead as the middle car in a sandwich.

The car before that was a 1998 Mercedes diesel with 225K+ miles on it that retired only because of body rust not mechanicals.

It helps that I did all the maintenance, so I knew how reliable they were.

Cars are insanely reliable and people get irrationally fearful when a car turns 100K and then again at 200K.

Agreed. I don't suspect "you are most people" but you can try to convince me otherwise.

What I said was what I think most people do. Not what is possible.

Do a lot of people sell a car that’s never once left them stranded at under 175K miles out of concern? Sure.

But I think most people who daily drive 175K mile cars would rely on them for a road trip without much consternation.

Almost no one does maintenance regular enough to have cars that haven’t grenaded something well before that point.

I know people that have literally never changed their oil.

One plus for electric cars though, fewer side effects for that kind of thing I guess?

They definitely loose fuel efficiency over time, so they go less far on the same filled fuel tank. Its not as dramatic as a 20% loss but its not nothing either.

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