Like when you have level 1 unlocked and lvlq creates a lot of money and you are at the point to continue to buy more and more expensive upgrades for lvl 1 or to save up to start to invest in lvl2.
If the market can just do what it does with ice cars and in parallel work on ev I would totally agree. We could do much more with ice.
But we know that there is a huge necessary investment curve for ev. When is the right time to stop investing money time and brain time for ice and start putting it in EV?
I believe they are not independent.
Funny enough I think old companies are getting more frightened then ever afer Tesla, apple, Sony, Amazon are investing into ev development.
Independent of this, ice to ev transition takes already relatively long in Germany and similar countries. This will take even more time in countries with less GDP.
Do we have the time to wait?
The same applies (maybe worse) to electric motors, but the efficiency of electric motors is substantially better.
there is a fair amount of work yet to be done with Batteries, but even there we know theoretical limits and are closing in on them. (Ask a chemist what they are). if you want to make a contribution to cars battery technology is currently where there is the most room for a big improvement.
Note, I have no idea what the costs for any of the above is. It maybe that ICE investments are still more cost effective. I doubt it, but I don't know. Not matter what improvements will be expensive.
And yes it's the co2 but the co2 is always the issue when we talk about climate change.
If we get ecopolitical: I think lithium itself is right now much better to extract from earth then oil as it will help to transition away from fossil fuels and I'm not blind to the fact that my existence creates struggles for other humans.