If we're talking 'next-gen' tech vs 'next-gen' tech, let's be a little fairer, newer cars are using the Atkinson not the Otto[1]. Throw in the fact that we're no longer tied to a camshaft for timing[2], cylinders can be shutdown at will (e.g. you're in bumper-to-bumper on the 405 or 101, your Benz-AMG or Stage 3 Mustang doesn't really need all 8 cylinders firing) and the fact that most manufacturers have at least one car with the option to reclaim that heat (i.e. even Ford Mustangs, notorious for being gas guzzling pony cars, have a turbo-hybrid configuration option) and things for the ICE look a little less bleak.

I'm all for pure-electric cars but we're still a long way from Joe the miner in Kentucky from being able to drop $1800 on a 2000 Toyota Tundra and having it be able to get him reliably from the jobsite and back. That's not even factoring in the whole capacity-decrease-with-use (and even non-use-- deterioration occurs simply by just storing cells at full capacity for long duration -- of lithium.

Even with the best, most conservative profiles on a battery-module controller for anything lithium based, good luck getting > %50 of cell capacity 5 years down the road of a daily driver [edit: 7]. Anode deterioration (at least, last I seriously researched it for projects requiring portable units for driving larger loads than an average car was ~1.5 years ago) was still a problem even in the lab.[3]

My sister abuses her 2004 Civic coupe to the point where I think she's still running a stock air filter and runs 30-35k between oil changes[4]. This was a run of the mill car she's had since god-knows-how-long and she's still getting 22mpg city [5] ~26 highway on an automatic transmission.

tl;dr -- In terms of total costs :

- capital (purchase) / delivery fee

- operational ($ of petrol for ICE per unit travelled/$ of energy from your power supplier per kw/h), insurance

- maintenance (tire wear, brakes, battery module(s) replacement(s)) over, eh, 5 years from out-of-the-showroom-into-your-garage, I'd be surprised if you saw the electric dollar-for-mile-traveled outperform it's ICE counterpart.[6] I'm far from the forefront of Li, but I do have a few friends in that field (both in academia and
in industry) -- even the most optimistic don't see pure-electrics reaching a TCO parity point of an ICE for the consumer in less than 10 years.

--

[1] http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1091436_toyota-gasoline-...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJXgKY2O4po FreeValve as explained by that really enthusiastic "Engineering Explained" 24 year old automotive engineer, dumbed down to the point where even I can grok it.

[3] Rumor had it, DARPA was using some crazy proprietary stuff that managed to completely nullify dentrification, but if they've managed to accomplish that anodic behavior, there's no way it's going to be released for public usage -- rather, it'll remain hush-hush minus 50 PhD's in metallurgy, and Lockheed drones all of a sudden posting performance numbers +30% from the last revision.

[4] She's not using those long-lasting synthetics that have additives to SeaFoam (yeah, I'm using it as a verb) out carbon build-up on the cylinders and what not, in case you're wondering. Just cheapo 5w/30.

[5] That, albeit was with me driving in 'conservative' mode rather than "hmm let's see the 0-160 on this McLaren".

[6] And I'm 100% sure if you bought a 3 year old variant of an ICE vs a pure-electric, it's no contest -- https://www.edmunds.com/car-buying/drive-a-nearly-new-car-fo... -- ignore the link bait title, it's just about the FMV of cars as a function of time.

[7] In addition to the response I made directly to child-poster, I'd like to concede that it is very possible he's ran 43k miles (i.e., literally at least a thousand cycles, likely closer to mid thousands) with a retained 98%. He makes a very valid point in bringing up the variance of cell capacity deterioration. I'd genuinely love to see some cal'd equipment with your standard dummy load and power analyzer log setup to see the data. (I ain't no fancy electron whiz but I can read me a chart or two.)

The take away is that overall capacity is a function of usage. I could probably get in the lab and simulate 43k miles of load in LabView discharging/recharging every 10 miles while keeping the thermal properties controlled as all heck and see 99.5 capacity retention, but these, again, aren't Joe's driving patterns.

edit 2: @maratd: See my edit 1/[7] (which I presume I was writing while you were drafting your response). I think we're largely in agreement re: usage properties being highly influential. My response to the OC (original child poster) addresses the deep-cycling cooling. As this has turned into a post with 8 endnotes, I think I've crossed the threshold of reasonable discourse.

Allow me to close with a quick remark re: BMC's on your power drill. Anything half decent will have active thermal monitoring specifically because of the reason you stated (much to the chagrin of blue-collar workers everywhere). "Ok, last weld before quittin' time..." paddle trigger actuates, worker expects wire-wheel to start spinning a to clean the slag of iron oxide off the root weld. nothing happens because the thermocouple on the motor armature triggered a lock-out "PC LOAD LETTER WHAT THE HELL DOES THAT MEAN?"