To what degree do you think this reflects learning over time? My impression is that high precision manufacturing is something that we've gotten very good at, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's easy.
I don't see what the difference is between being good at something and it being easy. I think the prices of these things are indicative. The fact that an ICE has a bazillion parts is superficial, aesthetic, and irrelevant. A bicycle chain has 400 moving parts, state-of-the-art metallurgy, and costs $10.
I guess it's a question of whether battery production will one day be easy as well. Certainly, 200 years ago modern ICE production wouldn't have been easy, so maybe we're just at a similar point in the history of battery production.
