Exactly. The only way many will adopt EVs is reluctantly in the face of common sense. It will be because of government control, not customer choice. That's basically communism. If EVs are so good, you wouldn't need to ban ICEs to force people into them. Given the choice over 100 years ago, motorists chose the practicality of ICEs over EVs. EVs are a retrograde step.
Funny enough, the 100 year ago analogy is a very good one! 120 years ago, you got the "early adopters" who jumped to motor carriages quite willingly, whilst they were unaffordable for the vast majority of people, the fueling infrastructure was pants, and range / reliability wasn't great.
100 years ago, (20 years later), most people had seen that the "motor car" was the way forward, and mass adoption was taking off. Still unaffordable for many, but prices were coming down and the second hand market was starting to develop - as was the infrastructure for both maintenance and fuel. We've only really had the current crop of modern EVs for about 15 years, so far, so we've got another 5 to get to where we were 100 years ago, if we're following your analogy.
And, of course, throughout that whole period of (say) the first 25 years of the motor car's history, we had the doom mongers and naysayers who felt that motor cars were a "retrograde step" and were never going to give up their horse - no sir, not for nobody, not ever...
The argument that "if something is so good, you wouldn't need to legislate people away from it", is very similar to the arguments used by the tobacco and fast food industries. The reality, is that oil will get more and more scarce and more and more expensive. If we don't wean ourselves off the stuff (leaving aside the environmental damage), we become beholden to the likes of Putin and the Arabs, or some rather unpleasant Latin American regimes. Right now, we are buying Russian oil from India (at a higher price, obviously), and pretending we're not buying it from Russia. EVs offer us the chance of hugely increased energy security and independence. You're always moaning about the country going down the toilet, yet you steadfastly oppose it being more independent and showing the world a bit of leadership?