Perhaps, but I fear that even if you build a $18k electric car, you will still have a hard time getting a lot of people on board due to the limited lifespan and

Perhaps, but I fear that even if you build a $18k electric car, you will still have a hard time getting a lot of people on board due to the limited lifespan and high replacement cost of batteries (at the moment at least). I've never paid more than $5k for a car, and I see a lot of people in my (pretty poor) state driving $1k clunkers. My current car is 18 years old, meaning if electric it would be nearing the end of the useful life of the second set of batteries. ICEs well maintained, can have a very long lifespan. I'm not saying that these issues can't be overcome, but I think it will be a much longer time before these types of vehicles trickle down to the lower 50% of the US customers, let alone, poorer nations, given that the current state of electric cars doesn't even begin to meet the needs of many people in the less dense parts of flyover country (yes range!)