It's also a biased, lopsided report. Guy I know who was an EV pioneer in California said it was so bad that, even though his career consisted of promoting EVs, he told people to avoid watching it because it presents such a skewed picture. Imagine it's been made by Michael Moore to put it into perspective. From what I can remember, and this was 20 years ago, his summary was that the EV1 was introduced purely to meet the ZEV mandate but in practice the vehicles were "saleproof" (his words). There wasn't any conspiracy to kill them.

Advertising is propaganda. And it uses emotions to elicit people to respond in certain ways.

The ad industry likes to say that they're in the business of informing people so they can make better decisions. Whereas they make sure you're uninformed so you can make worse decisions.

The average age of an EV on the road is less than four years, compared to over 12 years for hybrids and ICE vehicles. I'm not suggesting an EV can't also last that long, but it feels premature to say anything is "obvious" about TCO when they are such a new product category

The TCO of a slim Jim is less than the TCO of a steak dinner, too.

EVs are some of the cheapest cars you can get. All of the American manufacturers sell them at a huge loss, due to government regulations around average mpg for their lineups, etc

It's also part of the US national policy to prefer fossil fuels and oil. The US has become the world's largest petrostate.