Not always.
For example, look at light bulbs. If it was not for the government pushing us to more efficient bulbs, we would still be mostly using incandescent bulbs today. In fact, I was annoyed when new rules came out and thought the efficiency standards were a bit of government over-reach. Yes, saying this to my progressive friends pissed them off which was half of the fun of the whole thing. I'm all for reducing power usage but the idea of a $15 light bulb replacing a $0.50 light bulb stuck in my craw. But the government push was needed to get production up to a viable scale to make more efficient bulbs mainstream. Remember the earlier efficient bulbs kinda sucked, and were prone to infant mortality and so forth.
The expensive LED first bulbs I bought had little to do with saving energy. The incandescent bulbs burned out in my coach lamps outside, necessitating me getting on a ladder in a precarious way to change them, and due to moisture getting in and shattering the glass, I was replacing probably 5-10 per year. Didn't care about the cost, was more concerned about effort/risk. I replaced them with LEDs starting in I think 2013 (there's a thread on this forum somewhere about it!). Of the five exterior bulbs I put in, I think 3 of them are still in service. After I warmed up to the ones outside, I started replacing the ones inside (I did the math about energy savings). I kept receipts for all the $15 bulbs I bought, and got free replacements for the ones that died early, and pretty soon as government pressure pushed old incandescent bulbs off the shelves, the $15 bulb became a $8 bulb and now they are probably $2. They last longer than ever and each generation is more efficient than the last while putting out better light.
By about 2016 the only incandescent bulbs in my house were the special purpose utility bulbs in appliances (and even those now have more efficient alternatives).
Today for general lighting it would never occur to me to use an incandescent bulb. And the only reason LED bulbs (and a few other technologies) are the mainstream choice is because our government pushed incandescent bulbs off the shelves. I didn't like it at the time, but I'm grateful in retrospect.
I think transition to widespread EVs will be much harder and take a lot longer, but government pressure (incentives preferably as opposed to bans) will be needed to make it economically viable for scale up, just like light bulbs.