Existing infrastructure favors internal combustion cars. Gas stations abound with standard billing, convenience and standardized technology. I doubt whether either charging or battery swaps can be done as quickly as a fill of one's gas tank. Of course another significant advantage is overall operating cost. The low cost of gasoline favors the purchase of an internal combustion car. A lot of gasoline can be purchased with the price differential of an electric vs a conventional internal combustion car.
Gas infrastructure matters far less than you'd imagine, because (assuming you don't live in an apartment) with electric vehicles
you charge at home. How often would you have to go to a gas station if you woke up every morning with a full tank? I actually think it's
more convenient to keep my Tesla fueled than it is my gasoline minivan.
Maybe it's different if you have a Leaf, but the
only time the charging network matters is for long-range EVs is when you're on a road trip. And even then it's not as inconvenient as you'd imagine, especially with Tesla's vast and ever-growing supercharger network, because it's actually not that terrible to stop every once in a while. You
want to stop for half an hour and eat lunch, and a few hours later take a 15-minute pee break / stretch your legs. With an EV you simply choose to schedule those stops at a charger.
The upfront cost I think is the only real downside to EVs right now. You're right, if the difference between an EV and an equivalent gas car is $10k then you can buy an awful lot of gas for that much money. But that difference gets smaller every year. And
even with the higher upfront cost, you can
already make the argument that a Tesla Model 3 has "about the same" total operating cost to a Civic over 5 years, depending on how much electricity/gas cost where you live. And that balance only tilts further in favor of the Model 3 if you look at 10 / 15 years.
Another advantage that may strike you as odd is how to deal with the vehicle after 10 years. An electric vehicle may need new batteries. This is extremely expensive. You can nurse an internal combustion engine car along for a long time as it falls apart and parts may be readily available. Some of us have had to drive "beaters."
This seems to be either a combination of an outdated fear, or outright fear-mongering by the old auto industry. The data that we have for Teslas in particular, and keep in mind that we're talking about
old Teslas here, is that they may lose about 5-10% of their range in the first few years, but then
don't really degrade more past that point. And that's with the old technology, Telsa has been constantly improving their batteries, and are working towards launching batteries that are certified for a million miles. And
even if new batteries are going to be required because you need that last 10%, it does not follow that they'll be expensive in 10 years. As the electric car industry grows so too will economies of scale and technology improvements. Battery recycling will become a thing once there are actually some batteries that need to be recycled. Etc.
And if you remove the old/fake battery concerns, the rest of the point is just flat out untrue. Electric cars require
far less maintenance than ICE vehicles, largely due to the fact that they have far fewer moving parts.
I think that once the cost comes down a little more, and it will, EVs will completely take over the auto industry. They are simply better cars.