that’s only partly true:
economically liberal indeed means free markets and capitalism (this is why the australian conservative party is called the Liberal party)
however liberalism as a whole includes individual rights like human and civil rights, secularism, etc (this is what the US tends to define as liberal)
it’s an overloaded and imperfect term for our current global political cultures
similar applies to left and right wing:
the left are supporters of change and generally change that supports less fortunate and leads to less social hierarchy
what both these things have in common is that liberal and left wing are about change and new ideas, whilst conservative and right wing are about maintaining the status quo (or as is more currently the case, regressing to a previous status quo)
less about easy to start an EV company (honestly you can buy engines, so that’s not really the hard part; manufacturing is, as tesla found out the hard way) and more about it being easy to build an EV from almost nothing… you can ram batteries and electric motors into almost any body as you pointed out, so if a company makes junk it’s pretty easy to replace bits with whatever you like, and since electrons are electrons are electrons, your battery, motors, etc only have to kind of match