I’m not sure if there’s hard data on whether engines or batteries generally last longer though, cuz a modern engine will get to 200k miles before it needs to rebuild. But batteries don’t care about miles so much as charge cycles - but your main point about it being very easy to check is true, since you just measure the voltage coming off the battery, how quickly it changes, etc which doesn’t require any disassembly and on most EVs there will be a diagnostic option to run a fairly accurate self test.
edit: I later looked this up and found that modern EV battery life is equivalent to about 300k miles of driving, and even if you treat it like shit it’ll still beat an engine, generally speaking. EV electric motors last about as long, so assuming there isn’t a manufacturing defect/crash damage, any EV drivetrain from the past decade is probably good.
I’m not sure if there’s hard data on whether engines or batteries generally last longer though, cuz a modern engine will get to 200k miles before it needs to rebuild. But batteries don’t care about miles so much as charge cycles - but your main point about it being very easy to check is true, since you just measure the voltage coming off the battery, how quickly it changes, etc which doesn’t require any disassembly and on most EVs there will be a diagnostic option to run a fairly accurate self test.
edit: I later looked this up and found that modern EV battery life is equivalent to about 300k miles of driving, and even if you treat it like shit it’ll still beat an engine, generally speaking. EV electric motors last about as long, so assuming there isn’t a manufacturing defect/crash damage, any EV drivetrain from the past decade is probably good.