[Robotbeat]

Brakes and drivetrain are either much simpler or experience far less wear on an electric car.

And your point about how good internal combustion engines are for the price is exactly what I said earlier. It's pretty amazing that we HAVE been able to make ICEs so cheap and (relatively) reliable, considering how complex they are with so many moving parts.

The fact that Tesla had teething issues with their early electric motors does not change the fact that fundamentally, brushless electric motors are simpler, more wear resistant than internal combustion engines in principle by a huge margin.

Tesla isn't the only one who will be able to take advantage of the simplicity of a pure electric drivetrain.

[pkulak]

Yup. I can't even imagine how cheap, efficient and reliable electric motors will become after the kind of engineering effort applied to ICEs is applied to them.

[Turing_Machine]

Electric motors are already ~90% efficient and far more reliable than IC engines, so there's not much gain to be had there.

Advances would be more likely to come in the form of reduced weight (better magnets for PM motors, e.g.) and durability.

After all, it's not like we haven't been using electric motors for roughly the same amount of time as we have IC engines. Heck, most of us own way more electric motors than IC -- kitchen appliances, HVAC, computer drive motors, laundry equipment. Even the car usually has a dozen or two electric motors in it compared to one IC engine. :-)