So is owning a house outright instead of paying a mortgage every month. But you gotta cough up the cash up-front. Clearly not everyone can swing that.
I think we're going to see some really interesting things over the next 5-7 years as initial prices come down and operating costs stay low. It's going to squeeze the ICE market from both ends which could put them in a really tough position.
I'm reminded of the HDTV market about ~10 years ago when it seems that prices were astronomical. Now you can get a 4k TV for under $300.
https://www.walmart.com/browse/electronics/4k-ultra-hdtvs/39...
Not saying you should buy from them though.
I'll bite. Cars aren't 90% electronics, but TVs are. If you bought a BMW with everything but the drivetrain, it'd still cost a whole pile of money. Same with a Tesla. Sure the drivetrain might cost 20%-30% of the car's retail price, but even if you bring that to $0 you absolutely haven't made the car 90% cheaper for 5x the product.
Just because electronics have a _huge_ NRE (non-recurring engineering) cost and fairly trivial per-unit costs (like software) doesn't mean that the whole world works that way. Metal still costs real money because it takes energy to make/recycle, form, etc.
Sure there are ostensibly other EVs out there. But it's basically a fun car to drive (Tesla) or a total bummer (Leaf or Volt). I've got something in between (turbo 4cyl) for half the cost of a Tesla per month, fuel included.
Perhaps once the Tesla is paid off it gets super cheap to drive, but about that time you'll need a new battery pack I'd suspect. So in a way a Tesla is a $60k car with a $20k prepaid fuel card. It's cool, don't get me wrong. But unless you're willing to bury your head in the economic sand in a pretty serious way, it's not somehow more affordable than a car based on a traditional ICE.