The question is more about volume than about time, IMHO. What I mean is. . . Bringing any new automotive platform to production, electric or otherwise, costs several billion dollars. Then you need to sell about 50,000 units per year of that platform. So how long will it take to ramp up to that level of production-and-sales?
This is where GM (and several other companies) are having it rough. With Tesla already holding a big chunk of the EV market, and the remaining portion sliced really thinly between different car makers and multiple models and platforms, it’s proving hard for any new automotive platform to reach the scale where it becomes economically viable.
And when I hear about car makers delaying their plans, I have to just shake my head. That means extending their pain.
I don’t have an easy answer for them, though. They can either tough it out for even longer while the electric car market grows, or else they can make a Tesla-like leap of faith: Throw intense effort into designing an amazing vehicle, set up the production lines to produce it on massive scale, and trust that the masses of people will be eager to buy your amazing vehicle. And then die by the sword if you got the product wrong, Edsel style. But I don’t see GM or most other “legacy” auto makers attempting that. It’s too far outside the modern auto industry corporate culture (to include officers, board and shareholders too).
If luxury & exotic & sports cars were only dragsters and their value was measured in quarter mile times at the drag strip, then this might be a real problem. Luckily there are many other dimensions that these cars are sold on, and that’s not new.
I mean, go back to the 1980s when Ferraris and Lambos were nerfed (in the USA at least) by emissions regs and had no power, but people still bought them.
Likewise, the best selling sports car in history is the Mazda MX-5, which is not known for being super powerful.