I think the executives at these companies have long since identified that EVs are a far more fundamental existential challenge than people normally understand. The reason I think so is that Internal Combustion Engines are the primary barrier to entry into the car market. In an all electric world they are once again open to competition from startups who can source the same commodity motors, batteries, controllers, and the like. The barriers to entry drop and it becomes a brand new world of competition from all sides. The only major stumbling block being regulatory (crash testing, etc...). Nobody in the industry wants that, so the best solution is to fight the EV adoption as long as they can. Had Tesla not been a company they would still be dragging their heels with compliance cars to this day.
Of course countries without existing ICE manufacturers to protect, like China, are free to take control of the EV market and dominate the auto industry in the coming decades. An existential crisis for legacy automakers.
People will come in to say that the batteries are inherently expensive, but that's not really true anymore. Manufacturing costs have plummeted over the past few years, but you wouldn't know that in the west.
I think it is a market failure that there have not been more Tesla-like startups that come in to eat their lunch. I get that even when you don't need to make an engine the startup costs are high, but there is a crapton of money sloshing around the markets right now looking for the next big company. We need someone with the gumption to execute.
Ford built a world class product in the F-150 lightning, but their dealers and customers rejected it. A big part of it is that it’s a threat - you don’t need mechanics to fix electric cars.
Had Ford designed an affordable yet semi-luxury sedan or crossover, it would've sold like hot cakes.
The entire ecosystem of automaking is just like tech - clusters of complimentary industries. There's a symbiotic relationship between Mercedes, Ford, BMW, GM, etc and their suppliers -- many of whom in the american case were former subsidiaries of the automaker.
That's why Ford, GM, Porsche, Mercedes, BMW, etc have a hard time closing the deal on EV. The American car companies are more fucked because they've engineered the business around compliance requirements to mostly only make trucks. It's hard to eat your children. Meanwhile, BYD isn't run by a bipolar drug addict, and they are going to back up the truck, slowed down only by protectionism. I drove one when traveling, and it felt like driving a Tesla in 2015.
For companies building cars in Germany, the US and to some extent Japan & Korea, we're living in a do-over of 1976, except China is Japan.