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Originally Posted by Fuzz
Where are you seeing this info? I haven't seen any evidence for this. Tesla, the obvious leaders in this space should be best positioned to achieve that, yet they struggle mightily to get it under 40k US. For an equivalent to a 20k veihcile in gas. And that's the short range Tesla. Everything out there with any decent range is $60k plus. Add to that the more you make the more competition for resources, which drives up prices. Yes, you get some reductions through scale, but I don't think it is enough. 3-4 years sounds incredibly optimistic. 10, ya, maybe. Though gas engines continue to get more efficient as well.
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For electric cars, first there's a few things that have to be accepted as fact. Electric cars are more reliable, cheaper to maintain, and more efficient. What they aren't currently, is cheaper or more convenient. Convenience will be achieved as charging speeds are increasing rapidly, and for 99% of people, all charging except for long trips will be done at home overnight anyways.
As for the price, the issue is battery costs. Electric cars are still cars, so all non drive train costs for the structure are the same. So the difference in price is clearly the drive train. Electric motors are cheaper than combustion engines, so the difference is almost entirely batteries. It's hard to find numbers on battery costs that agree exactly, but they all trend exactly the same way. In a cost survey of electric vehicle battery purchasers by Bloomberg we can see the trend clearly. In 2010, assembled battery pack prices were over $1000 per kWh (Model S for example may have a 90 or 100 kWh battery). By 2018 it was $176 in this survey. It's notoriously hard to get manufacturers to discuss price, but GM recently said they're getting battery packs for less than $145 and expect $100 by 2021. You can see what is happening.
Scale is what's driving this and yes, there's more than enough supply of the raw materials available. In fact, metals like lithium, Cobalt, nickel, etc are actually dropping in price despite battery production capacity exploding.
Volkswagen, Toyota, and many other manufacturers are planning to have all electric or hybrid lineups in the next few years with zero all combustion engine models. These aren't expert predictions, this is the industry itself planning to go this way. Reluctantly, Ford is making an electric F-150. Once it's cheaper to produce, why would they continue making gas ones?