I think people are confused at how much money big conglomerates like VW and Toyota spend on power train development -- i.e. VW Group revenue yearly is around 250 Billion US dollars.

In the entire group power train and vehicle development is budgeted at around 120 Billion a year, so this is just over half of that budget spread out over probably 5 years. These are not SV startups, they are enormous companies by revenue and investment (which is why they have low profits and aren't sexy to invest in )