I'll take this as a non answer then.
That seems to go against what I know about basic accounting.
You have parts in an ICE vehicle that can last 30 years or longer. But the reliability of your vehicle is the totality of the overall reliability. The drivetrain is a major constituent so obviously iimproving reliability will increase the overall design life. But it won’t bring the other components up to the same. For example, my last car was replaced because the suspension was rotting from harsh winters. The drivetrain was still perfect, but it didn’t make sense to maintain/keep it considering the depreciated value of the car.
Besides that, many people look at cars as a status symbol rather than strictly on utilitarian means. I doubt many people will keep their EVs long, just like most don’t keep their perfectly working cell phones for a decade. The current stock price of TSLA seems to indicate most don’t think the market will shrink this much
So for me imagining going from 20 year year old cars to 30 year old ones is not a stretch. Where for you it's going from 5 years to 30.
I’ve worked as a controls engineer at an automotive assembly plant side-by-side with quality engineers. I’ve also worked as a reliability engineer.
Methinks you make too many assumptions :-)
I don’t think the Sprinter vs Transit example is a very illustrative one. Personally, I’d rather have a used Ford or Dodge simply because the life cycle cost of a Sprinter is insane where I live due to maintenance costs. They have similar base prices new but with any features the Sprinter quickly outpaces (ha) a similar American van in initial cost as well. I don’t think they are apples to apples.
It didn’t work for the Big Three because at the time, Japanese were trying to differentiate themselves and they did it on the quality front. I tend to think it was more about complacency than planned obsolescence.
I think people generally look at mechanical and electronics very differently. People often look at simplicity in mechanical designs as a feature, where I think the opposite is true in electronics. I’m skeptical that people will be buying EVs expecting to drive the same one for 30 years, but we’ll see.