China is leading the challenge to incumbent carmakers

At the start of the 20th century at least 100 American firms were handmaking expensive cars. The economics of mass production led to the concentration of the industry in a few vast firms. Now the process has gone into reverse. In China alone some say there are 300 EV-makers. Batteries and electric motors, which can be bought off the shelf, obviate the need to spend billions developing several ICEs to serve a range of cars with different requirements. One sort of battery can come in a variety of sizes; one sort of motor will suit a variety of vehicles with performance characteristics tweaked by software. So profitability can be reached from smaller volumes.