The drive train is enormously different. And that's the part that breaks the most.
Here are a few differences, off the top of my head (I'm not an auto engineer):
Much simpler cooling. Extracting heat from batteries is easier than from an IC engine.
No need for high temperature moving parts like pistons and valves. No need for oil under high pressure to cool and lubricate those parts. No need for a turbocharger, spinning at 100,000 plus RPM.
No need for a complicated system of storing and delivering gasoline (tanks, pumps, injectors).
No need for pollution mitigation such as EGR and Urea injection.
No need for expensive catalytic converters. Around here, those are routinely stolen for the metals, in daylight, right off parked cars.
No need for a transmission. Except for exotics such as a Porsche Taycan.
No need for a transfer case. If there's a motor for each wheel then there's not even a need for a differential.
I think the totality of differences in the drive train is profound. The change isn't minor. To riff on something that Jules Winnfield said: ain't the same fuckin' ballpark, it ain't the same league, it ain't even the same fuckin' sport
By contrast, under normal operating conditions, most of the wear parts of the engine and driveline are running in a sealed environment, bathed in the appropriate lubricant, and, in the case of the engine, actively cooled to maintain optional running conditions.
Al the parts that make up an ICE are incredibly mature technology. The engineering work to get the tolerances and everything else worked out that has been done over the last hundred years is unreal. And it's happened in concert with work by chemists in the lubrication industry, and every other ancillary industry. The level of reliability under normal use with regular maintenance defies belief. Like, when was the last time you gave your spark plugs even a moment's thought? The progress in metallurgy, fueling and ignition systems has made them an all but lifetime part on modern cars.
I would actually wager that for most people, the least reliable and most aggravating part of their car is now the infotainment system.
I carry a portable jumpstarter because you just dont know when your car will refuse to turn on.
At this point long-term real-world data is available for Tesla Model S, and it loses about 4-5% per 100,000 miles.
Will electric motors be more reliable than internal combustion engines? Probably. But it's a difference that's not going to be noticable by most people.
Tesla Model 3 apparently has a 6 year service interval.
Electric cars are still greatly more efficient on energy usage compared to gasoline cars. You'd have to grossly overcharge for electricity to make the comparison anywhere close.
Use this calculator to see the difference in fuel vs. electric costs:
Gas cost per mile at 30mpg @ $3.00/gal is $0.10.
In most cases, yes, it's going to save money. You'd need a high MPG car in an expensive electricity state that has somewhat cheap gas to really flip that.
Also you lucked out with a particularly reliable model. I can guarantee you there are plenty of 20-year-old cars that are riddled with engine and tranny problems.
Surprised me given their reputation. I will not be buying any more of them.
How many miles do you have on your focus? My edge started degrading fast after about 100,000 miles.
Almost never. EV motors and their gears don't have the problem of injected pollutants in the oil. This is why most are expected to last a million miles or more.
The lack of a transmission also eliminates a major point of failure (gear shifting)
> But batteries have thousands of parts and electrical connections.
Those aren't mechanical parts, that's the big difference. When people talk about EVs having fewer parts, they are referring to the moving parts. The parts that most commonly fail in ICE.
Define "many" and give a citation.
Tesla warranty for the drive unit is 8 years/120,000 miles. I doubt they'd set it that high if the expectation was that these drive units are going to fail all over the place.
Compare that to both ford and toyota which have a 5 years/60,000 miles powertrain warranty
> And batteries do also fail
They can due to manufacturing faults. However, both batteries and engines follow more of a washtub curve.
> Not sure why you would say otherwise.
You are overstating the failures of both.
But they are not cheaper, yet. Vehicles available in both IC and electric consistently cost much more for the electric model. The base model Chevy Spark is $13,600. The base model Chevy Bolt (which GM says is the successor to the electric version of the Spark) is $36,500. The base model Ford F-150 is $29,290. The base model electric Ford F-150 is about $40,000.
2022 is going to be interesting for electric vehicles. That's the year electric trucks, from Ford to Freightliner to Volvo, ship in volume. Possibly Tesla, too. Suddenly, electric vehicles will be very mainstream, doing routine jobs.
I think electric vehicles are mainstream there, already. It wouldn’t surprise me if all further winning bids were fully electric.
For example, googling “public transport bus tenders electric” gives me
- https://www.sustainable-bus.com/news/de-lijn-tender-350-elec... (Belgium, 350 buses)
- https://www.sustainable-bus.com/news/tm-barcelona-tender-ele... (Barcelona, 210 buses)
- https://www.electrive.com/2020/11/23/amsterdams-gvb-to-procu... (Amsterdam, 142 buses)
Meanwhile Ford is definitely playing catch up and the Electric F-150 seems like it's charging for all of the above ("luxury base package", R&D costs from too many years in the hydrogen wilderness, "new and innovative" model retooling costs, etc). (Ford's an interesting dark horse in the 2022/2023 statements crowd. I think they are hedging too many bets right now, and playing way to conservatively. Current estimates are that if they got their head in the game and cut the Electric F-150 base price in half they'd dominate the US market very quickly, and there's some sentiment that if they weren't playing dumb amortization games with themselves and very easily created a less luxury package base model they are possibly in a position to do exactly that. Based on current estimates of true marginal costs.)
The part that I find most interesting is that Chinese manufacturers with no ICE legacy are building cheaper cars than everyone else right now and it is amazing to watch. There are sub-$1000 cars on Alibaba today! Those sub-$1000 cars might not be strongly interesting to US market preferences right now (where "big" and "truck-like" dominate perhaps way too much), but if it is an early warning sign that the margin wars in EVs are about to get started then it is a really exciting and encouraging one.