One of my colleagues is a leading expert in EV propulsion (
www.https://chargelabs.ca/ ) and we have agreed that EV propulsion technology is, at present, about where ICEs were in around 1930s-40s.
We know how to design and build them for a certain level of performance and durability is improving steadily, but the amount of new R&D that will be done in the 15-30 years will make today's products seem very primitive just as a 1990's Prius or early Nissan Leaf is now pretty much a dud.
The key variables being worked on are range, charge rate and cost and all of them are key barriers to adoption at present, but the barriers are coming down pretty rapidly.
The next big challenge will be the supply of key strategic materials needed for high efficiency motors and batteries. At present, many of the important materials such as lithium and cobalt come from regions of the world (lithium from Chile and cobalt from the Congo) that are remote and very unstable and do not have good supplier infrastructure. that makes pricing and security of supply uncertain. As long as EVs are only a few percent of the market (presently about 3% in NAM), that isn't too big an issue, but a really large adoption rate will strain those supplies and cause problems.
For that reason, a lot of attention is being paid to supplies of strategic materials in more stable places like.....Canada
...where the natives are more....reasonable.
The next decade or so will be very interesting indeed.
