They are simple powertrains fueled by complex and heavy battery chemistry. I think affordable for everyone will happen with the next generation of solid state batteries.
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What's complex about it? Isn't it 18650 cells welded together?
I'd also love to hear what's the complexity about. To me the high costs are a side effect of EVs still being seen as luxury vehicles, and not specifically because EV tech is inherently costly.
I build RC planes as a hobby, and I regularly have to weld such batteries myself. Obviously the requirements in a commercial product are different, but I can't see what's so complicated about Li-ion batteries and their lifecycle. They seem an order of magnitude easier than all the tight-tolerance moving parts of an ICE that need a complicated computer controller just to fire properly.
I suppose it's the chemistry that's going on in there.
In principle it's all simple, but what exactly happens inside is not as well studied as combustion engines.
Case in point: this year researchers found out that a type of tape used in li-ion batteries is actually not chemically stable in this environment and replacing it with a different material increased lifespan by 10% and decreased self-discharge by 70%:
https://techxplore.com/news/2023-09-tape-lithium-ion-batteri...
Plenty of other stories of this type - one of them brought LFP batteries into the limelight, because researchers figured out how to close to double their capacity.
Huh, interesting. We've used Li-ion batteries for decades, so I wouldn't have guessed we'd still have such fundamental things we didn't know about them.