Plenty of EVs will drive for years as well (so long as they have a good thermal system for the battery). So I'm not sure what point is being made.

Saying "It costs a lot of money to replace the battery" doesn't mean much as the battery, even if it has 70% of it's original capacity, is still perfectly functional. Very much the same as the engine which also costs a lot of money to replace.

I just thought the parent comment was unfair to ICE cars to make the EV proposition sound better. I'm a fan of EVs but they are still more expensive to buy. That said, very cheap ICE cars have a sweet spot where any damage to engine / transmission / clutch+flywheel often means replacing the entire car since the repair cost exceeds the market value of the car.

I heard plenty of horror stories involving modern cars and their transmissions and engines.

That, for one - also: people constantly are overconfident in their ability to judge the status of really anything in a ICE car.

Newsflash: you simply cannot "readout" the status of an engine, transmission, ...

But you can/could/should for a battery.

Now, someone hammer that into peoples brains...