Volkswagen, even its current state, has significantly more resources available than Tesla to develop EVs. The same holds true for General Motors, Ford, Toyota, and most of the other major automakers, FCA excluded. Toyota has publicly stated that pure EVs are not the technology map it will follow. Instead, Toyota is making a significant investment in hydrogen as a more suitable carrier of energy than a large battery pack.
BMW has made a sizable investment in EVs and it has yet to pay off for the firm; however, some of the developmental costs were in lightweight carbon fiber materials and that technology is transferable to other products. Volkswagen, through Volkswagen, Audi and Porsche, are making investments in EVs, battery technology and hydrogen fuel cells. Fortunately, Volkswagen made investments before the current diesel emission issues so the company has gathered the appropriate knowledge in EVs. It is putting that knowledge to work in the Audi Q6 and in the Volkswagen Phaeton, along with the Porsche EV.
One probably that will exist for at least a decade, is the slower technology growth rates of the batteries. Battery improvements involve chemistry, not solid state physics, so the technology growth curves are not the equivalent of microprocessors, which follows Moore's Law. With Moore's Law, processing power basically doubles, on average, every 24 months. Given this restraint, even future battery storage capabilities will mean that the battery packs will remain quite large, and thus, more appropriate for large sedans and SUVs; otherwise, range will suffer.