All of this may be true, but it will give (some) German car companies an excuse to keep their obsolete ICE production lines around a little longer than they wou

All of this may be true, but it will give (some) German car companies an excuse to keep their obsolete ICE production lines around a little longer than they would otherwise. And that will in turn slow down EV development and all the other natural tipping points that would wipe out the economic benefits of ICE cars in the first place. In the end German industry will pay for it. Companies like BMW slow-rolled their EV rollouts back in the second half of the 2010s and as of 2022 they were being substantially outsold by Tesla in the US (not just in terms of their anemic EV sales, but across all types of vehicle) and European sales are getting eaten away as well. This is before Chinese EV competitors catch up and really start to compete. If you’re a European manufacturer and you’re not pouring all your resources into EV production then you’re already dead. This is a place where Europe really needs to step in and save their manufacturers from themselves.