EV price to operate conveniently ignores battery pack replacement costs, which will more than make up for oil change and spark plug costs.

It also conveniently ignores the time spent waiting for it to charge. Maybe in town where you can plug it in at night and let it charge while you sleep it's ok, but taking a long distance drive will have you cooling your heels at some roadside money pit costing you even more money spent on trinkets you see while waiting. Not to mention the increase in your waist line caused by eating gas station food to kill time.

Comparing EV's to early IC cars is a strawman. the general tech level increase since then should have eliminated any teething issues commented upon. If you wanted a real comparison you should look at EV's back then, they had them, and compared that to the IC vehicles of the same era, same general tech level in play here. Guess who won? For pretty much the same reasons EV's are not the panacea today. So 100+ years of technological evolution still hasn't fixed EV's inherent issues. Range and recharge time. Range is increasing at the expense of more weight, not to mention the fire hazard with batteries. Yes, gasoline has it's fire issues but the tech to deal with that is developed.

Ease of use is of primary importance to the average consumer. If your "better idea" is more difficult to use it'll get a rep for being junk, regardless. And on that note Tesla's teething problems were largely self induced as it was primarily issues putting the cars together on an assembly line, something a myriad of industries have figured out successfully. Musk was too self involved to get outside help from experts to sort the issues out.