Honestly, VW spent years developing the ID line which was just too expensive, buggy, and constanly positioned as an alternative to much cheaper and better equipped Golf/Polo lines - it's like they were afraid to canibalize their own products. I don't know a single person who owned an ID.3 and was actually happy with it.

Or Mercedes, where they decided to build extremely expensive EVs that departed from their core design so much their core audience didn't want to buy them, then they were surprised EVs don't sell.

Or Audi who were probably a masterclass in offering the worst possible value for money you could imagine with their EVs - £50k Q4 that still had manual seats, like what are you competing with exactly?

Only Skoda could really kinda buck the trend with the Enyaq, which proves that VW could be competive if they wanted to, but they actively decided not to.

And don't start me on the Peugeot/Renault/Opel cars, which initially looked incredibly interesting and actually competitive, but I can only guess that Stellantis told them to tone it down because again - have to protect their core business of ICE cars, can't be too good.

And then MG came in with very well specced working EVs, and then other Chinese brands moved in, and big european manufacturers are crying that they are eating their lunch. Like, you guys had literally years to address this, but you decided to protect your legacy product over investing in the future = you're reaping the results now.