Electric cars still have suspensions to fix, brake pads to replace, tires to balance, steering, windows that will not roll up, air conditioners that break, crash damage to deal with, etc., and mechanics can work on those items. At some point I expect that mechanics will start doing more with them as they become more common. A problem though is that because electric cars put out pollution at the power plant instead of out of a tail pipe, they are exempt from having an ODBC port and such and they can keep a lot of maintenance items secret. A money making opportunity would be to reverse engineer them for mechanics references.
At some point, it seems like lithium could become scarce and expensive, and people may not like electric cars once the batteries start decaying. My car will be 18 years old this June. Everything works, it drives well, and gets ~32 MPG. Doubt many electric cars that would cost twice as much new will be making the same claim. Plus, I drove it on a 620 mile round trip a couple of weekends ago. Stopped for gas once. And that was through some really sparsely populated areas in the south west. Can not see doing that with an electric car. Way back when, turbine engines were the future, then the Wankel engine, then if we were smart we would switch to diesels, and now it vehicles using lithium--that the world may run out of. I think gasolene engines will be around for a while yet.
I think some of the Earth-worshipers know that there is not a much sustainable about strip mining South America for lithium--the plan is to ban internal combustion, but we can go to electric cars!, then when lithium is prohibitively expensive, well, guess you can ride all that mass transit they have been pushing, and no cars for anyone but the environmentally exempt rich and famous as they roll off to their next conference on what to take away from the peasants.
