Most of the EV vehicle costs are material costs - the batteries, copper for the motors and wiring, and so on, are a huge part of this cost disparity. The bulk of the vehicle weight is in rare earth minerals, and that weight is not insubstantial.
Very little of an EV's weight comes from anything that's particularly rare.
The main components in a modern Tesla battery are lithium, iron, phosphorus, and oxygen. Lithium is the rarest, at about .002% of the Earth's crust. There's "only" about a third as much of that as there is copper. Now think about how much we use copper. Iron makes up 6.3% of the Earth's crust, making it the fourth most abundant element behind only oxygen, silicon, and aluminum. Phosphorus makes up about .1% of the Earth's crust (which is still 17x as common as copper, and only slightly behind hydrogen). And of course oxygen is the most common element in the Earth's crust.
The industry as a whole (EV vehicles) have massive governmental subsidies at every stage of production, and regulatory burdens are almost completely absent. There is every financial incentive to succeed.
The industry as a whole is built around a dealer network that depends on repairs and service charges to stay in business. Apart from stupid minor problems, EVs have far fewer major mechanical issues than ICE cars, so dealers don't really want to sell them. I would argue that there is every financial incentive for car dealers to ensure that EVs fail. Those dealers are the ones who help people decide what to buy, and if they're discouraging EV sales, you're not going to get any EV sales.
If Ford (5th biggest automaker in the world) can't make it happen, and Toyota can't and won't make it happen (#2), and VW (#1) clearly can't make it happen (link)
I believe that the word in all three cases is "won't" not "can't", for the reason stated above.
and the ones who ARE making it happen are still struggling financially even with these subsidies after 20 years
How do you figure? Tesla sold 1.8 million cars in 2023. And even in a really down quarter this year, they still made over a billion dollars in profit. That's not what I would call "struggling financially". Sales are down lately, but I think that's mostly the public's reaction to Tesla's really stupid and user-hostile design changes (e.g. no turn signal stalk, changing gears with the touchscreen, etc.) that they have made over the past few months, rather than because of anything specific to electric vehicles themselves. I love my 2017 Model X, but I wouldn't feel comfortable buying any car that Tesla is currently selling, and I doubt I'm in the minority here.
Fundamentally, EVs won't be cost effective or desirable for most people until they solve the energy efficency problems, the capacity problems, and the endurance problems.
What efficiency problems? They're already vastly more efficient than ICE cars by any metric. Capacity problems? How many people routinely drive more than 300 miles without stopping? Endurance problems? Far fewer major mechanical problems than equivalent ICE cars also contradicts that theory.
EVs are already cost effective, and if Tesla would stop trying to be cute and f**king up their steering wheels in new and infuriating ways every year or two, we wouldn't even be having this conversation.