Rust, collision, part availability, and newer safety tech are all reasons to scrap an old EV. I hope manufacturers realize this and make the battery easy for DIY removal, similar to removing the catalytic converter from your rusty and bent ICE vehicle is the big moneymaker.

As a low mile driver with a tendency to hold on to cars, it would also probably surprise people how much the average life of plastics are closer to the 15-20 year mark, especially when regularly handled by people. Things like plastic knobs and buttons can break in interesting ways that a lot of people wouldn't expect. We tend to think of plastics as "forever chemicals" because we hear that term a lot, but it's not that plastic is particularly rugged against regular use across time, it's that how it breaks down is awful (see all the discussions of microplastics; it break down and then becomes a part of ecosystems in disturbing ways).

(ETA: Also the EV is so much more the "software-defined" car than anything, and the lifecycle of software versus tech debt and long term maintenance is going to be a large issue, even though the cars are mechanically simpler, the software is something making up for that in its complexity.)

> I hope manufacturers realize this and make the battery easy for DIY removal

This seems to be the case so far. A lot of scrapped cars' batteries seem to be going directly into second use in a second car. A lot of the manufacturers are also prepared for future "power wall" secondary uses of depleted batteries, but so far there has been too much of a market for the used batteries in second cars for used (even depleted) batteries to build a "power wall" market for used batteries. (Tesla's brand of that concept that sounds a lot like the generic term so far has almost exclusively been using new batteries for their products. Nissan's brand that no one has ever heard of, dedicated to used batteries only, has scarcely built or sold anything and is in danger of shutting down as an effort.)

The economics of used EV batteries is already a fascinating thing to watch, and something we'll probably see get more interesting rather than less.

Which is why those catalytic converters were stolen so often. I'm sure a battery would be a lot heavier and bulkier but I'm not looking forward to people stealing those....