The climate benefits of retiring an operational combustion engine vehicle

I fully agree with you but you're leaving out two ongoing costs that are usually in an EV's favor, fuel and maintenance.

That probably wouldn't make the difference for a fully paid for vehicle but it can make a substantial difference depending on electricity (and access to solar) and fuel prices.

>higher insurance, and higher registration fees.

And higher propensity to beep and whine at you and higher propensity to pull a "I'm sorry dave" at any given time.

The economy does not occur naturally. We can turn the knobs on this equation by just having some taxes. For example, carbon taxes. That should change your calculus pretty significantly.

As a data point: I’m at year 8 of Model X 100kWh with basically 0% capacity loss. If it exists at all, it’s less than 1-2%, so less than what I can reasonably measure with just the odometer and battery indicator.

Nissan Leaf gave BEV a bad name because it had much worse battery tech. Battery longevity is not a problem for modern, or even decade old cars.

The issue is less the wear and tear of the battery and motors and more the wear and tear of everything else -- suspension and brake components are going to need replacing, along with radar and ultrasonic modules, etc. These parts will be at least partially end-of-life and hard to get by the end of that 20 year period. Federal law requires some amount of parts availability for 10 years + some release of part designs to the aftermarket after that, but I have a hard time getting parts for 21 year old Ford designs that were less than popular, so I would be surprised if early Tesla models are having an easy time 20 years on. This gets much much worse as you start to look at the number of abandoned EV models from the Big 3, the abandoned/dead/dying companies (Fiskar, Lucid, Lordstown, etc). That doesn't hit the vast majority of all EVs, which are just Tesla, but it does put a dent/makes the buying decision harder. Now expand that to not just Tesla, but what does Tesla do with a Cybertruck? Like all things, the specific product decision matters a lot, and this is a new area (even at 14 years old) so there will be lots of people who optimized for cost and not maintainability.

4% of Toyota engines need to be replaced before 250,000 miles; 3% of Tesla batteries need to be replaced before 250,000 miles. "More reliable than a Toyota engine" is pretty high praise.

Yes.

EV Batteries Last Way Longer Than Expected - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43001996 - February 2025 (2 comments)

New study shows: EV batteries last much longer than expected - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42228901 - November 2024 (70 comments)

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

Certainly not the case for hybrids like Priuses. The battery system lasts 10-15 years and 150k-200k miles. Any ICE car on the market now should be expected to last a lot longer than that; I drive cars that are 25+ years old and really don't need much significant in the way of repairs.

The "get rid of a working car" is particularly suspect, and reminds me of the "cash for clunkers" scheme which was basically a giant sop to the auto industry. Why not just have EVs replace ICE vehicles when they break down and aren't worth repairing?

Exactly.

My daily driver turns 54 this year.

Never cared much about the climate scam, never will.

The new EV mail trucks are running routes in my area now. Not my route yet but I have seen them within a few miles of my house.

Still happening.

https://news.usps.com/2025/12/01/usps-is-delivering-its-new-...

> The Postal Service’s $9.6 billion upgrade of its delivery fleet is proceeding apace.

The organization plans to roll out 106,000 new vehicles by 2028, including 45,000 battery-electric next-generation delivery vehicles and 21,000 commercial-off-the-shelf battery-electric vehicles.

> Additionally, USPS is upgrading infrastructure at its facilities with the addition of charging stations for the zero-emission electric vehicles, of which over 14,000 have already been purchased.

> So far, more than 35,000 new vehicles are on the road.

> “The new fleet rollout is proceeding well, aligned with our plan,” said Justin Glass, the Postal Service’s fleet management senior director.

(USPS spends ~$500M/year for fossil fuels, so it’s a no brainer to electrify)

"But Trump and the Postmaster General cancelled that and went to use gas guzzlers instead. I wonder how that is working out now."

What makes you say that? The biggest impediment to the rollout was that the company that was supposed to build them repeatedly failed to do so, and finally had their contract pulled in 2021 and it was given to a defence contractor who seems to be on track to actually deliver the things.