No, not a conspiracy theory. I've seen breakdowns of...

No, not a conspiracy theory. I've seen breakdowns of social/mainstream media outbreaks, tracing the origin of various talking points to think tanks funded by fossil fuel interests. Climate misinformation is their main product, Murdoch is a keen subscriber. I'm pretty sure anti-EV black ops would be on their agenda. Koch industries is a well-known example, the Kochs seemed to spend as much time on their think tanks and foundations as they do on their petroleum business. It's tied in with Trumpian style politics. MAGA has a love affair with Putin's Russia. Look up the definition of a petro-state and you will see Russia is there on the list. The Russians are also experts at manipulating public discussion. Before falling out with his murderous boss, Yevgeny Prigozhin was a pioneer in this, setting up the "Internet Research Agency" a misinformation and astroturf factory which helped sink Hillary Clinton. I'm not sure about the other petro-states, especially in the middle east. But you can see this is an area where governments, intelligence, the military industrial complex all have motivation to get involved, and tools to deploy.

The other aspect of this is that industrial capacity in the private sector is a national security issue. A country with a strong car industry can flick the switch and convert it to military power, that's what FDR did in WW2, that's why Chifley was so keen to get Holden off the ground. The rise of EVs has the potential to tip that balance away from the US and Europe and towards China, so there is incentive for anti-China hawks to slow the EV transition too.