https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StreetScooter
To me that doesn't sound like there is no market, it sounds like big car manufactures want to milk their ICEs as long as possible.
On top of that Boeing said they're not interested in assembling my plane!
Clearly these incumbents are holding me back.
/s
Sarcasm aside maybe it just wasn't worth it to VW to take on a relatively small project outside of their core competency?
I think this can be explained by VW just deciding its not worth it rather than saying VW is trying to suppress electric vehicle development.
Also, small vans for use inside cities is a big market. All delivery services need them, all kinds of workmen need them. With bans for Diesel cars in German cities on the horizon all kinds of businesses are complaining because Diesels are the only offering in that category.
There's then an ecosystem of companies that will work with end users to design, build and fit custom van bodies. If you want a mobile broadcast van, or an ambulance or a mobile command centre? That's where they come from.
If you see delivery vans that aren't standard models, they've almost certainly come through the same ecosystem; companies like VW generally aren't in the business of working with end users on custom products.
[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=van+cab+chassis&tbm=isch
Given that VW's CEO has been whining to the press about how annoying it is that VW is now not their customer but a competitor, they clearly now think that they should have wanted the job more. My guess is that they did not expect the Post (which as a massive, formerly state-owned company you'd expect to be fairly conservative) to risk going their own way and succeed with it, and thus misjudged the risk involved with letting them pass.
Based on this knowledge it's not clear to me the responsibility of creating an electric variant is the responsibility of VW.
The streetscooter, on the other hand, is really just the most barebone thing you could build around a battery. This saves a lot of money for a startup, but at a big brand with all the processes for sophistication, deviating from the established path would eat much of the savings.
But that's not the only problem: many of the same people who are enthusiastic about the pragmatic minimalism of the streetscooter due to the underdog image would punish the same car if it was made by VW or any other of the big ones. And that's not just interior finishing and amenities, the same applies to more serious things like safety and reliability. People will cut streetscooter a lot of slack where they would be unforgiving towards a big brand.
Personally, I’m an ideal EV candidate. But it just costs more, especially when you price in electrical work for home chargers, etc. The TCO of a nicely equipped Accord is far less, and will be for a long time.
All Tesla did is prove you can sell an EV at a high price point to tech people who love all sorts of trendy things that don't sell outside that sphere. This in no way says EV is a mass-market vehicle yet.
Tesla did bring many infrastructure issues to the forefront, and that's no small feat.
Tesla is a company that was built from the ground up, without any prior design and manufacturing experience, and they have been mass producing cars for only 5 or 6 years. You can't simply expect them to have the same business agility as BWM, which is a company with over 1 century old.
The lack of "better" product offerings from Tesla is not due to the technology, is due to the infancy of the company.
Their cash position decreased by about 162 million last quarter and they have ~3.3 billion on hand at the end of Q4. There are a lot of risks still out there due to the production bottlenecks that currently exist (and maybe more on the horizon with S and X), but the cashflow situation isn't as horrible as some want to believe.