Regenerative braking rusts rotors
This is the failure that catches out every new electric-vehicle owner and almost nobody expects it.
On an EV, most deceleration is done by the motor acting as a generator and feeding energy back into the pack. The friction brakes are there for hard stops and for the last few miles per hour, and on a gentle commute they may barely be applied at all.
A brake rotor is cast iron. It rusts whenever it is wet. On a petrol car the pad sweeps that surface clean twice a minute and it never matters. On an EV that regenerates almost everything, the pad may not touch the rotor properly for days.
What follows is rotors pitted and scaled while still well above minimum thickness, and caliper slides seizing without ever having worked hard. A brake job on an EV here is a corrosion job with a friction change inside it — and it arrives at a mileage where a petrol car would be barely halfway through its first set of pads.
Charging adapters, in every direction
The valley has the densest and most mixed charging landscape in the country, and adapters are directional in a way listings often obscure.
J1772 to NACS (AC) — a NACS-inlet car using a J1772 wall unit. AC only. NACS to J1772 (AC) — a J1772-inlet car using a NACS destination charger. AC only, and the one most non-Tesla owners actually want. CCS1 to NACS (DC) — a NACS-inlet car fast charging at a CCS1 station. NACS to CCS1 (DC) — a CCS1-inlet car fast charging at a Supercharger. The expensive one, because it carries hundreds of amps and handshakes with the station.
An adapter changes the connector, not the current and not the power level. An AC adapter can never make a DC fast charger work, and no adapter raises the ceiling set by the car's onboard charger.
Check the amperage rating against the circuit rather than against what you usually draw. A 48-amp wall unit dialled down to 32 today is still a 48-amp wall unit tomorrow.
The parts an EV still needs
Not everything disappears. The reduction gearset takes oil. The cabin filter loads exactly as it always did. Suspension, steering, wheel bearings and tyres wear faster than on an equivalent petrol car, because an EV is heavier and delivers torque instantly.
Tyres in particular. The weight and the torque together mean an EV goes through them noticeably faster, and running them under-inflated costs range as well as rubber.
A climate that does very little damage
The valley is mild year-round: no road salt, no freeze, no extreme heat, moderate humidity. Cars last here, and the corrosion that does occur comes from bay air rather than from anything on the road.
That makes the failure list unusually short and unusually specific — which is why the two items above matter more than they would anywhere else.
What the rules and the weather here actually say
- Whether your county tests, when the next one along does not
- Santa Clara County is among the counties where a smog inspection falls due at every registration renewal. California DMV, read
- The state of the road surface here
- 78 percent of the major roads across the San Jose urban area are in poor or mediocre condition. TRIP, June 2026, read
- The weather here, in a number
- Normal annual precipitation is 13.48 inches, which is less than a third of what falls on the east coast cities. NOAA climate normals, read
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