Electric cars are a good, lower-maintenance option

Dear Car Talk:

Electric motors have been around a long time. They are simple devices with few moving parts. They have no complicated valve trains, no head gaskets to blow, no piston rings, no oil to change and no coolant to leak out. I am an old man, tired of car maintenance and in need of a lowmaintenance, reliable vehicle. It would seem that an allelectric car is the solution to my problem, but life has many ugly surprises. Are there excessive maintenance issues with e-cars? Serious reliability problems? Am I missing anything that I need to know? –John

RAY: I don’t think you’re missing anything, John. You’re right. Electric motors are simple. Much simpler than internal combustion engines. And they’re pretty bulletproof. While we’re still in the relatively early stages of the electric-car revolution, hybrid electric cars have been around for decades now. And the electri c motors in hybrid cars have been pretty trouble-free. We’ve seen them run for hundreds of thousands of miles without fail- ure.

The bigge ris sue is battery failure. But most electric cars come with eight- or 10-year warrantees on the battery. So even that’s not a big deal. And presumably, eight to 10 years from now, replacement batteries will be even cheaper.

There are still things that can go wrong with electric cars, though. They are cars, after all. So theyhav e electronic components, like computers, screens, safety systems and sensors that can fail. They also have mechanical parts that will wear o ut– lik e tir es,s hocks and wiper blades. Just because the car is electric doesn’t mean tha ts omeda yyo u won’t need an air conditioning compressor, or a door handle.

But you’ll never have to replace a hose, weld an exhaust system or fix an oil leak. And by the way, your brake pads will last much longer, because regenerative braking (which uses the mov-