This has more to do with the fact that if you make an electric startup, you get subsidies and if you make a combustion one, you get only penalties and eventually shut down.
Please cite sources. Rivian, for example, didn't get any subsidies based on its EV status.
Please also demonstrate a combustion startup that was penalized and shut down, or even just show how it would be penalized and shut down.
I would also point out that the most heavily subsidized industries are the ones that rely on fossil fuels. Taxpayers subsidize them by cleaning up their pollution, directly giving them tax incentives, and taking care of the people they make sick.
If fossil fuels or combustion vehicles were priced with externalities included, we'd move away from them very quickly.
Technology is iterative. Just like start-ups take years to become profitable, it might take years for a new car manufacturer to become on-par with the competition. Raising the floor impedes new competition. Regulatory capture is popular among american oligopolies
As a result of severe air pollution in the 1960s, then-California Governor and future Republican hero Ronald Reagan created the California Air Resources Board to set a statewide approach to managing air quality.
The plan to create these regulations began almost 60 years ago, and I believe the future 2020s regulations were known by everyone in the mid 1990s.
The logical conclusion of this argument would mean that that seat-belt requirements, air bag requirements, crash testing, etc. are regulatory capture meant to impede new competition.
Assuming that's true, these requirements exist in (I think) every country which makes automobiles. And even countries with no domestic automobile production.
