Electricity is quite a lot cheaper than gasoline or diesel in every place I've ever looked. Otherwise people would be generating their own electricity using gasoline or diesel generators but they don't outside of emergencies because it ends up being absurdly expensive per kWh.
Exactly, price and cost are two separate things and usually people forget that on a small scale everyone optimizes individual gain, whereas on a large scale the total cost calculation is important (including each and everything related to it).
This thread contains a ridiculous number of excuses and mental gymnastics over why something can't possibly work, when quite obviously it does work for a great many people and can work for many more. There seems to be a fallacy that we must put all our eggs in one basket so to speak, and settle on one single technology to meet all our needs. Electric cars are simply another available tool for the task of getting around, they're a tool that will work for some people and not others but we are nowhere even close to saturating the market of those for whom it is practically ideal. Once that happens then we can talk about what makes the most sense for those where it is not so clear.
The difference between these arguments is in the question. What
can work does not automatically make it mainstream.
It usually leads to moral vantage points and no result if such a discussion is based on bad examples as guideline if something is feasible at all, mixed with a different concept of what mainstream really means and how things scale.
I often wonder how many people actually regard that there is a value chain from pork to sausage (so to speak). Your average grocery store bought items went through extensive filtering and excess which might lead to the assumption things are better or scarce than they actually are. IMHO this is usually achieved by a strong increase of waste (again, difference between price & cost). Observing such developments in terms of energy contained or converted is a good method to get back to the total costs as a guideline.