China has sub-$15k equivalent EVs today. Cheap EVs are certainly physically possible even with today's scales, and partly it's just the catch-22 perception hump of "EVs are only for early adopters and luxury cars" (for both consumers and manufacturers) keeping EVs from hitting some scale benchmarks to push them cheaper.

The used market still isn't showing a lot of EVs, but that seems to be that statistically most EV owners keep their cars for longer. That's an interesting statistic, that maybe points to reliability on one side, and a possibly very different replacement rate on the other side. Which is to say that the average EV first owner is currently keeping their vehicle for 7-10 years rather than the 4-5 year replacement rate that has been of typical of ICE vehicle sales. (If EV owners were only keeping their cars for 4-5 years, as you suggest of some hypothetical "HN bubble" that would be a lot more of them on the used car market, and in turn fewer complaints of the high cost of EVs. The long first life of an EV is also keeping the costs up and affecting depreciation rates.)