Everyone assumes that cheap and reliable electric drivetrains and battery packs will shortly be a commodity, available to anyone in the 100 TWh/year volumes tha

Everyone assumes that cheap and reliable electric drivetrains and battery packs will shortly be a commodity, available to anyone in the 100 TWh/year volumes that are required to cover the world's road transportation needs. I'm betting that this won't be the case until about two decades from now. Battery cell & pack production will be a strategic requirement for any vehicle manufacturer that wants to produce in volumes > 100,000 vehicles/year. Also, the goal posts aren't fixed -- if your commodity battery packs cost 10% more than those the competition have access to, but are still expensive enough that they make up a substantial portion of the total vehicle cost, you won't be able to compete. So even though battery cells will eventually reach a point where it's "easy" to make an EV, there will already be enough competitors that make it economically impossible for new entrants to compete.