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.

Your remark about the plastics rings so true from my experiences. A friend's old Corolla used to constantly have plastic parts just crumble when handled in a regular fashion. New old stock parts would be nearly as brittle, often breaking only a few dozen uses. The car's motor was OK but everything else about the car was just falling to pieces.