Consumers will still be able to buy used ICE cars in 5-10 years. No one is forced to buy an EV.
He's speaking specifically from the point of view of a European car manufacturer, rather than a generalised view.
Just my two cents, but If a nation with a competitive product is active in your market, but isn't politcally aligned with your nation, and can stifle supply of vital materials to your supply chain, its very possible they can manipulate the situation to the benefit of their product instead of yours. You can't then sanction them to balance the scales if you've legislated your own, alternative products out of existence.
It's not quite the same as oil dependence (from the perspective of the motorist at least) - if someone turns off the oil taps, they're not simultaneously offering your customers their own alternative (or that of a politically aligned nation), whereas Chinese influence in battery supply (for example) could conceivably do just that. Ultimately if someone as a consumer is happy enough buying a BYD as they are a BMW, then they may not care, but it's not hard to see why that could end up being bad for a region's economy.
Material supply as a risk is clearly on BMW's mind, the whole 'Circular' thing they're going on about, i.e. recycling, must be part of a risk mitigation strategy as much as an environmental one. In this respect, IIRC, proposed regulations for increasing recycled/recyclable content in batteries coming later and being less stringent than regulations for squeezing out ICE cars, does seem slightly arse-about-face.
Overall, as a region, it does appear that Europe is somewhat dependent on other nations to satiate our personal mobility desires one way or the other, which is another reason to invest heavily in continent wide mobility infrastructure.
