> As a counterpoint to "throwaway cars", when they don't need repairs they do seem to be able to do a million miles or more with comparitively little maintenance.
It's just that the rest of the car is poor quality. That's fine if it's cheap and easy to fix, but it's not. You can't get the parts, you can't install the parts if you can get them because they have to be paired with the car, and, in general, they're like a lot of modern ICEs that fall apart around a running drivetrain. Except worse, because they're luxury cars and you can't even do the repair work yourself.
It's interesting reading your blog post, as there's essentially a lot of projection as to what life would be like for Tesla drivers post-warranty. It's now over four years since you wrote that post, it would be neat to see how it's turned out.
Unfortunately, I no longer work with enough Tesla owners to have a reasonable sample, and I've lost my tolerance for the Tesla corners of the internet years ago. Someone should talk to owners and do that, but it's hard to get straight out of Tesla owners since so many are personally invested in Tesla succeeding. "Yeah, it's been 100% reliable, they've replaced my drive unit twice, battery once, six door handles, a LCD screen, but it's all under good will NDA care, so... er, sorry, I can't actually tell you any of this."
It was a reference to an old post of mine (https://www.sevarg.net/2016/03/05/is-tesla-building-throwawa...) - and, I actually agree with you that they do have million-mile grade drivetrains.
It's just that the rest of the car is poor quality. That's fine if it's cheap and easy to fix, but it's not. You can't get the parts, you can't install the parts if you can get them because they have to be paired with the car, and, in general, they're like a lot of modern ICEs that fall apart around a running drivetrain. Except worse, because they're luxury cars and you can't even do the repair work yourself.