Modern ICE have been refined for over 100 years and have improved enormously. But there is just a lot more involved in making them move than electric engines.

Modern ICE have been refined for over 100 years and have improved enormously. But there is just a lot more involved in making them move than electric engines. That's not to say EVs aren't complex or hard to build. There are a lot of parts inside the battery pack. But they aren't moving parts and they don't need the same kind of regular maintenance. Electric cars don't have oil to change and they almost never need brakes replaced because of regen. They don't have O2 sensors that fail, they don't have spark plugs to change, they don't have timing belts to replace, etc. If you look at a list of the top 10 most frequent car repairs, maybe 9 of them can't happen on an electric car. It is just a simpler system of moving parts. The complexity is in a different place. The problem with PHEV is you have the different types of complexity of both systems combined just in an effort to boost range.