I beg to differ, everyone thought it's possible but there is no mass market for electric car at a reasonable price point. Volkswagen had several working prototypes in the 1970s especially after the oil shock.
I worked for eBay for some time. They could do most of the stuff that startups around them could do, they had the tech, the ideas, the money and the people. But startups can be net negative for some years, or be happy with $10M revenue, while a project at eBay being net negative would be killed and a $10M project would be thought as too small. Championing a $10M project at eBay for several years would be a career killing move.
So selling 1000 cars a year is a success for a startup (Tesla) but nothing a large company like Volkswagen (11M cars per year) can sustain as a project. Large companies are just not structured in a way (would need to be structured like a VC fund, and some try, e.g. Alphabet) to handle this small but growing opportunities. They need to find the right moment to jump in.