this post was submitted on 09 Jun 2024
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With so many fewer moving parts compared to an internal combustion engine, yes, EVs could be durable enough to be handed down from generation to generation. Just keep replacing the few moving parts that wear out. Worn interiors can be refreshed. Electronics are modules that can be replaced with updated versions.
What we have to look out for here though is this overall trend of 'rent everything own nothing', though. Car companies might try to make vehicles lease-only, so you have all the responsibilities of ownership but none of the benefits of ownership, and it's never paid off, you just pay forever.
While it's true that EVs can be built with fewer moving parts in the drive system itself, and that companies could absolutely produce longer lasting vehicles if they focused on longevity, there are still a lot of parts of a vehicle that simply will not last beyond a certain point. The moving parts of an EV still cover everything in the suspension, wheels/brakes/steering, and a number of other components that are very costly to replace, not to mention the underlying frame/unibody of the vehicle itself being vulnerable to wear over time depending on the conditions it's driven in. "The few moving parts that wear out" still covers a huge swath of a vehicle, even if you take the engine and transmission out of the equation.
Well-built EVs with a focus on longevity and repairability could extend the lifespan of the average people mover by a great deal, but at the end of the day cars will by nature eventually reach a point where the cost to repair some major core component becomes too great to justify, outside of rare or collectable cases.
I know all that. I'm talking about the moving parts in the ENGINE, which then would not exist. A brushless DC drive motor only has bearings to worry about. A gearbox is necessary but a well-made gearbox should last for decades and is way easier to rebuild than an entire ICE engine. Of course suspension and brake parts wear out over time, but as you can see I wasn't referring to those any more than I was referring to tires. All those things are cheaper and easier to replace, really, than having to worry about an entire ICE engine, with the fuel system, cooling system, and exhaust system to worry about. At worst an EV might have a motor or it's inverter go bad, and of course the battery pack has a limited lifespan, but those are essentially drop-in replacements compared to what you have to go through with a modern ICE and all the crap attached to them.