As @boonhet@sopuli.xyz said, it isn’t really the same scenario.
There were EVs as early as the 19th century (wikipedia I know, but I’m not doing a deep dive for a forum comment) and they were used for various applications.
So while there definitely was, and still is very much an anti-green economy conspiracy going on… that wasn’t the only factor supressing EVs from mass production and usage back then.
Battery chemistry was inefficient - so a battery big enough to compete with IC engines even back then would’ve needed to be HUGE, making it both too unwieldy and expensive to justify putting into a car.
Any battery you could actually fit into a reasonably sized car was still prohibitively expensive, and had nowhere near the mileage to compete with the day’s IC engines. So they just weren’t viable for the masses.
And as Boon said, if nobody can make a profit making EVs for consuners, they simply won’t make them for consumers.
It’s only with cheaper and more efficient battery chemistry, and a booming green economy thanks to consumer pressure, that they’re now starting to be able to make EVs that can compete with IC engines on both price and mileage - which is what consumers really care about.
Which is to say, if there truly was a competition destroying profit to be made, somebody would’ve done it… Which is why so many car companies were even researching EVs to begin with.
As @boonhet@sopuli.xyz said, it isn’t really the same scenario.
There were EVs as early as the 19th century (wikipedia I know, but I’m not doing a deep dive for a forum comment) and they were used for various applications.
So while there definitely was, and still is very much an anti-green economy conspiracy going on… that wasn’t the only factor supressing EVs from mass production and usage back then.
Battery chemistry was inefficient - so a battery big enough to compete with IC engines even back then would’ve needed to be HUGE, making it both too unwieldy and expensive to justify putting into a car.
Any battery you could actually fit into a reasonably sized car was still prohibitively expensive, and had nowhere near the mileage to compete with the day’s IC engines. So they just weren’t viable for the masses.
And as Boon said, if nobody can make a profit making EVs for consuners, they simply won’t make them for consumers.
It’s only with cheaper and more efficient battery chemistry, and a booming green economy thanks to consumer pressure, that they’re now starting to be able to make EVs that can compete with IC engines on both price and mileage - which is what consumers really care about.
Which is to say, if there truly was a competition destroying profit to be made, somebody would’ve done it… Which is why so many car companies were even researching EVs to begin with.