He's a software developer which makes his opinion on any topic worth a lot more than regular people, for example mechanics who fix trucks for a living. Is this your first day on HN?

Combustion engines need lots and lots and lots of little extra bits to hit the (still very bad) efficiency numbers they have. Every extra moving part is another thing you're paying the mechanic to check, repair or replace. Good for the mechanic, bad for your trucking operation.

Electric motors are brutally simple. So first that means they break down less often, second it means they're less complicated for the mechanic to figure out what the problem is.

And that's before the straight to technical advantages. Take braking. In a normal truck you turn speed into heat by rubbing brake pads. This gradually destroys the pads, so they're a consumable. But an electric truck turns much of the speed back into electricity instead. The pads get much less wear, you replace them less often.

Unless the conversion from speed to electricity is more efficient than to heat, shouldn't the degradation rate be the same? Or is the heat causing most of the degrading?

Braking force in EV is from magnetic fields in the engine pushing electricity back into the battery. Magnets and copper wires do not degrade when used. Pad brakes in EVs are only used when braking HARD, as in emergency stop. They degrade less because they are not used much.