.
The real-world evidence so far is that, for one example, many Tesla batteries are at 200,000+ miles and are still going strong. Some users (typically taxi-cab companies in large cities) report 300,000-400,000 on the original batteries. Same for the electric motors.
.
Sure, a small percentage of EV batteries or electric motors are defective and crap out early, but the statistics are the same (worse, probably) for ICE vehicles: There are plenty of 2020-something Ford Brocos with V6s dropping valves, and last week I saw yet another recall for police Explorers blowing rods out the side of the blocks. Toyota is replacing 102,000 V6 ICE engines in their latest Tundra and Lexus vehicles. Ram's 6.7 L Cummins engines have a long history of dropping the grid-heater bolts into the intake manifold and on into the cylinders. No vehicle, no technology is immune from defects. But so far Tesla's EVs and Toyota's hybrids have proven that their traction batteries can indeed go many hundreds of thousands of miles.
.
As another real-world example, my commuter & town errands car is a beater Prius, 20 years old, 197,000 miles on the original hybrid battery. My professional-grade OBD2 tester shows the hybrid battery to be 100%, and as the one that's driven the car for all 20 years, I can honestly say there has been no noticeable degradation in terms of hybrid battery performance.
.
Bashing EV batteries out of hand without verifiable facts to back up statements is just not helpful. Yes, there's a big environmental hit to mining and manufacturing today's large, Li-ion EV batteries, but even the anti-EV articles peg the CO2 payback at less than 100,000 miles. Some fairly credible studies put it at 40,000-80,000 miles, depending on if the user charges via rooftop solar or charges from the grid fed by coal-fired power plants in their locale. So if today's EV batteries can go even just 200,000 miles, let alone 400,000 miles, then there is a net environmental benefit, at least as far as the CO2 accounting goes.
.
As has been said many times, THE most economical, environmentally-friendly decision any of us can make is to NOT go out and buy a new vehicle to save the environment, rather the smart thing to do is keep your existing vehicle in good running order and run it until it's no longer reasonably useable. The old WW-II mantra comes to mind "Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without!"
.
In a few years the technology of EV batteries, recycling the batteries and the charging infrastructure will have improved to the point that for many use-cases, an EV will be the most sensible and economical choice (especially if one has rooftop solar and can charge their EV at home from their solar as opposed to charging from the grid). We'll still need plenty of ICE vehicles running on gasoline/diesel/natural-gas/hydrogen to do the heavy duty jobs. But for a huge amount of daily driving, there's nothing wrong with using EVs for that local, light duty stuff. That saves more fossil fuels for the big jobs (trucking/earthmoving/air travel/recreational towing, producing plastic, etc.)
