car manufacturers can afford to experiment - it's not like they don't have room in the budget. and they did experiment.

if you don't know GM's history with electric cars: they were positioned to execute a successful transition about thirty years ago, but they simply chose not to.

As someone with a lot of family working in GM corporate, it seems like they were never really confident in it in the first place. So many of them scoffed at the entire idea of electric cars and most still do, even with their own lineup and having driven them themselves. They expected them to fail and never put in the actual effort to support it. It seemed like 80% of corporate were against it completely and without reason because they themselves were doing fine and could afford the gas on their free corporate car and massive discounted family purchased cars. And everyone below them fed their egos by spewing garbage about how well they are all doing with their high margin luxury trimmed cars without considering how they are pricing more and more people out of their entire brand each year.