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The average life of a car is only 10 years? Wow. I tend to use my vehicles much longer than that and I don't spend a lot on repairs.

Maybe this average is a result of accidents after a certain age. Almost any accident in a 15 year old car will cost more than the vehicle to fix professionally. I was surprised by the number though (which, to be fair, they didn't actually list).

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Not even close. The average age of an American car in operation in 2017 was 11.7 years. Which implies that the average lifespan is well over 20 years.

It depends a lot on where you live. Cold climates with salt and ice destroy cars. Loads of rain can do it too. Where I live in SoCal cars last absolutely forever. You see people driving early 90s Hondas all the time and they've just gradually fixed stuff. The body is worn but basically good after almost 30 years. I imagine here a Leaf could outlast its batteries, but maybe not in Michigan or New York.

The battery is the most costly part of an EV but battery prices are falling rapidly. The rest of an EV is simpler and has fewer moving parts than a gas car and will probably last longer.

Yep, I drive a reliable but beat up ~300k-mi 90s car in CA and whenever I visit family in the west chicago suburbs by car I get viewed as white trash driving such a piece of crap and constantly checked out by city police. The salt destruction completely redefines what it means to operate such an old car there. The prevailing attitude is that only ghetto poor people drive old beat up cars because they can't get a loan for a new one, presuming everyone needs to replace their car often.

When I'm in CA, people in parking lots often strike up conversations about the car like it's a classic and make offers to buy it. Police never take any interest in me since it's so common for people to drive old cars in a place they continue working just fine. The culture is completely different, I often wonder how much of it is due to the road salt alone.

Side note but isn't it sad that being poor gets you hassled by police? Not only is it irritating but it leads to the poor getting tons of extra nit picky tickets that end up costing hundreds of dollars.

It's also racial. I drove with a cracked windshield for almost a year when I was at University of Cincinnati. A black friend was amazed and said if he did that he'd get pulled over within days.

A lot. I’m in the salt belt and can’t believe how some identical cars look when I watch a YouTube repair video for a car from S. USA or Australia.

Wouldn’t the Leaf’s battery outlast the car in NY or MI? Cold weather can be great for cars, it’s just the salt that promotes conduction (and therefore oxidation on the anode of dissimilar metals) that really hurts things.

I suggest a great North-south car swap, where one side mitigates the climate damage caused by the other.

Very cold and very hot is bad for batteries, and can help them degrade faster. So cold winter would degrade them too