I like the detail that went into your reply, but it would be a lot better (and less downvoted) if you removed the vitrol.

adding mass increase the costs of tires (ongoing) wheels, shocks and other suspension bits that have to be stronger and bigger to support the mass, and it increases wear on roads too. so energy density does affect upfront costs and lifetime costs.

It seems like you responded only to the gravimetric density part of the chart and not the volumetric part of the chart.

For performance cars, weight is absolutely a factor. (I'm not aware of any performance cars that weigh twice as much as their competition.)

(I do think it is fair to ignore the financial energy density and assume that a century of progress would have addressed substantial fraction of that gap.)

Will charging speed really only be of minor importance? How do you charge your vehicle if you live in an apartment building? And if you can't do that and charging at a station takes more than 3-5 minutes then you cut out a huge part of the populace.

First off, your comment is mainly about current technologies. That misses the entire point of my comment. They were working in the lead-acid regime. Calling my graphs out of date is moot (even when you consider that 500Wh/kg is only a slight bump in my [0] link). I do think EV will win in the end, but that that statement has nothing to do with what my original comment was about. Also current gasoline engines are more than 25% efficient, not 10. But that's beside the point.

So if you're going to attack me, attack me on my points. Don't create a false comparison. Petrol had more than 10% efficiency from the get go. 10% of 50MJ/kg is much larger than 100% of 0.18MJ/kg (upper end of Lead-acid). You'd have to have an engine under 0.1% efficiency for EV to be able to compete in the beginning. (You'd have to have that upper end of lead-acid) This is all my comment was about. The state of technology and manufacturing (both!) over a hundred years ago. I was responding to "We could have had electric cards from the beginning" not "We can have electric cars now". If I said the latter then I understand your visceral, but I didn't.

Yeah, things are different now. Those 1.8MJ/kg engines at 100% (we'll round up) are able to start competing with 25% of 50MJ/kg(12.5MJ/kg), but there's still a way to go. That's why a Camry and Model 3 have similar weights and the Camry gets twice the range. But yeah, things are looking much better for the EV's now because there are other factors that matter like torque, space, and we don't need to often go more than 200 mi. But most of these factors are, for the average user, less important and so don't matter as much. Especially in the beginning where electric vehicles were struggling to drive between cities.

I look forward to the future of EV, but that doesn't discredit the history. And that doesn't make lack of technology a myopic take. Reality is just that a petrol vehicle getting 100 miles range is easier than an electric and requires less advanced technology and manufacturing techniques. But technology and manufacturing has progressed A LOT in the last hundred years.

You can argue these points and prove mathematical efficiently all you want, in the end, it's about those who control the purse strings.

Right now, that is still 'Big Oil'. They are buried into our politicians pockets like an Alabama tick.