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what is maintenance like on a PHEV vs an EV or ICE car? My intuition says it has more parts than a either and is thus more complicated

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I've had my Chevy Volt for 3.5 years and driven almost 100k km (60k miles) and for service... have done one oil change. That's it. (Well, tire rotation, but that just comes along with bi-annual winter tire changeover)

Extremely reliable.

my car was also like that for the few years with five digit miles. it's after that i'm concerned about.

The more you drive electric the less maintenance. The car even tracks how many miles you put on the ICE and uses that to calculate oil changes, which in practice works out to every 2 years for me (which is also the maximum between intervals anyways).

The drivetrain on the Volt is actually quite simple and elegant when compared to a typical ICE car.

EV maintenance is actually almost funny. Here is the maintenance for most EVs:

Every 10k miles:

1. check all the filters and fluids 2. rotate tires

That's also the maintence for most ICE cars, with a few extra fluids.

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