[chandley]

Tesla's, and I think most of the modern EVs, have the two different kinds of brakes, the regenerative braking of the engine and actual friction brakes using pads. The pads last a long time, because the regenerative braking keeps wear and tear off of them.

The big motors are pretty straight forward, most of the computer stuff goes into managing the battery (I know acceleration and friction braking both work if the computers go down, as I have had that happen). Fixed gear, capable of very high RPM. Could make it run as a generator for water or wind or human power.

Plenty of people already buy damaged Teslas and pull the battery packs for use in home solar and wind installations. 60 to 100kWh, and growing. 2050's? 200kWh might not be crazy. The semi-trucks have massive battery packs, truly crazy sizes. The batteries are both somewhat fragile and fairly tough: Individual cells die to impact pretty easily, but there are LOTs of cells, so even partially destroyed packs can be scavenged for useable batteries by someone with an EE background.