I mean, yes that's probably true for mass market vehicles, but not true for luxury cars. Look at Teslas. Yes, the drivetrain is vastly simplified, but I can't imagine things like those gull wing doors, power door handles, air suspension, etc. will be inexpensive to maintain.

Well I should have clarified I was referring to the engine, which is the part that generally has the most problems over the life of most ICE vehicles.

In the Teslas, there are dramatically fewer moving parts and consumables.

No rings to dry rot / wear out, spark plugs, fan belts, oil filters, pistons, fuel pumps, etc, etc. I was actually referring to the Teslas. I do however, think the X was too much too quickly. It is a mess from an engineering standpoint. That being said, the drive train will last much longer than a similar ICE. I suspect in the long run, with battery wear, it will be a bit more than a wash.

Disclaimer: I'm long on TSLA and Solarcity Solar Bonds.

Gull wing doors are about the only thing there that are more complicated than features in other higher end cars. Air suspension's been in luxury cars for several decades, and there are all sorts of complicated locking mechanisms for doors, including pneumatics in various mercedes vehicles. When you start getting into the luxury lines, you start seeing all the added complexity because everyone needs some signature feature to distinguish themselves from just being a nice comfortable ride.

There's a cooling system(at least in the EVs where you don't want fast battery degradation) so that is the only "large" maintenance item.

Even then it's only at ~45k and runs about $700.

Overall running costs for EVs are incredibly low. At 48k miles right now and my cost in tires($1k @ 30k mi) is actually my highest per-mile cost, even above electricity.

Critically though, there is nothing like the head to block interface, which is a major source of cooling system issues on IC engines.

Yeah, it's less about design issues and more that you should do a coolant swap @ ~50k.

From what I've heard there's some people out there with ~150k and still on the original brake pads(!).

Out of interest, which EV do you own?

Model S 85D

I know the Nissan Leaf doesn't put much stress on the oil either, so changes are extremely rare. And regenerative braking takes a lot of stress off the brakes, so Tesla's brake pads are rated for 100,000 miles. No spark plugs or air filters either.

What oil?

This is half-remembered from an article a while back. It didn't have any details about the "oil" so it might be gearbox oil.