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I think a more fundamental problem for these companies is the actual manufacturing of the vehicles. It's easy (relatively speaking) to develop a one-off prototype, it's much harder to scale that up to build 1000/cars/month for example.

Why, with charging standards? It's not like we needed ford gas stations, Honda gas stations etc. For Tesla it made sense since they were the first movers, but I think everyone else will just rely on the infra provided by 3 or 4 big players

Just because Tesla has a recharging network and a car company doesn't mean others need a similar setup. It's fine for them to be separate companies. Just make sure your car supports ISO 15118 Plug and Charge.

It may be the case that it is easier to get a return on investment on installing chargers than building cars. If you go down that route, you might want to strike deals with car companies and their dealerships to include setting up your charger network on cars when they are sold.