To be honest, the first part is partially true - the upfront cost is what's the biggest barrier.
I obviously don't know the situation with chargers in the UK currently, but even for us here in Bulgaria there's quite a lot - I have friends/acquaintances that have been driving electric for ages and go all over the place with no problems. For us every bigger Kaufland/LIDL/Billa parking lot has a few of those, a lot of petrol stations along highways and main roads have started putting a few columns/ports, Metro (Costco for Europe) all have a few everywhere, so it's getting there slowly. We have a hired car service that you can reserve/pay/use via a phone app and it's entirely an electric vehicle fleet, have faced no issues with them and finding chargers, we've used them to go on bigger trips when my old car was in the shop too with no public-charge-related issues.
The problem still remains that a new EV of moderate quality and with the bigger range (400km+) costs between €60-85k, which is ridiculous and depreciates quickly.
If they manage to reach a normal price compared to petrol/diesel engines there would be absolutely no competition and we'll see how fast the infrastructure for charging will be brought up, as it's not a difficult or too time consuming transition.
Then there's the battery issue and lithium mining, but recent developments have been made to make lithium from salt water more efficiently, which would technically be a close to infinite amount of it to meet our needs.