I think you read the engine part wrong.

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.

> The Tesla Model S P85 is a single-motor, rear-wheel-drive car. High power and torque was an issue in the early Teslas, which caused a few motor replacements. Three units were replaced by 680,000 km and the fourth one was running up to 1,000,000 km.

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.

I take it back, it was me, not you, who read it wrong. I had remembered the Model S as being a quad motor vehicle, incorrectly.

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.

Thanks for your candour. For what it's worth I absolutely agree with you fundamentally there is no reason an EV shouldn't be able to make the million mile mark with only modest maintenance (perhaps having to replace individual components of the motors, perhaps a bearing for example). Fundamentally they don't have points of sliding friction, this makes wear and reliability much easier to achieve.

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.