It would be great to see some statistics but to me most of the cars he picks up require some kind of major repair work making it uneconomical to fix. Often not the engine admittedly, the vast majority can drag themselves onto the back of the truck under their own power (and it's so much faster to do that than get out the winch cable that there is a big incentive for him to try). Usually though they aren't running correctly or have obvious issues with the clutch or gearbox. Almost none of the modern cars suffer any appreciable rot.
On the other hand I've been watching the price of 1st generation Nissan Leafs as I want one as a run around and over the last couple of years there prices appear to have increased. There are a couple of companies who will swap a 40kwh battery pack into a 24kwh leaf making it a very usable vehicle indeed, though the people doing this seem to be doing it for sentimental reason as you can buy a 5 year newer car with a 40kwh battery pack for the same net cost.
The price for a full 24kwh battery appears to be in the £2-4k range as even with 20% degradation it's still a huge amount of stationary storage.
Of the two vehicles with any noticeable rust, one is a '05 Mercedes Sprinter, these seem to be predisposed to rust. The other was a T registered (1999) Land Rover Discovery but even that has obviously been modified for off-road use so it's hardly fair to include it.
I wonder if this is climate related or US cars are not built with the same rust treatment.
https://insideevs.com/news/559261/tesla-models-p85-1500000-k...
https://twitter.com/IovePianoBlack/status/155158555774626201...
The battery pack was recalled and its replacement has logged 1,000,000 km.
Similarly, three of the four motors were all recalled at the same time, the fourth one wasn't and made it to 1,000,000 km, possibly 1,500,000 as well, the article says they don't know.
Parts which are recalled and replaced by the manufacturer say something about reliability, but nothing about durability: reliability tends to improve.
Regardless, my point is the engines were 3/4 replaced once, not replaced three different times. The battery was also replaced twice, but that's because the interim was a loaner, not because it failed twice.
Not sure how you read that as 3 motors where replaced at the same time. It would be somewhat pointless given that the Model S only has a single motor. Three were replaced before 680,000km and the final replacement made it to 1,000,000km.
The word recall doesn't appear in the article. The first battery had a fault. By the sounds of things Tesla may have found a design fault which was then fixed because of the investigation into that particular battery but that interpretation is reading between the lines.
Accordingly, I'll grant that this isn't a good example of an EV making it past the million-mile mark. I've made the case elsewhere for why it's not such a crazy thing to expect.
What impact this would have on the battery is an interesting question but with modern temperature control and BMS systems it may not even be a deal-breaker.
That is a big claim, which is completely unsupported by reality. ICEVs do not get recycled because the engine died. Body rot, repairs that cost more than the value of the car, etc, this is why cars are taken off the road.
If anything, the current batch of early generation EVs are probably going to have shorter than average lifespans compared to established ICEVs, not longer.