Mid-engined is most useful as a transition step to a modern skateboard design EV. Gets the center of gravity low and closer to the actual center point of the car, which a skateboard design then improves.
Corvette can't admit to aspirations of a Pure EV this decade (thanks, politics), but in my opinion, that's the only way to absolve a lot of the GM executive sins on being wishy washy about EV futures.
> Corvette can't admit to aspirations of a Pure EV this decade (thanks, politics)
I wouldn't attribute it to politics, but rather, the fact that the Venn Diagram of performance car enthusiasts and people willing to buy an EV are basically two entirely separate circles. When you consider cars that have a very big loyalty to the brand, like Corvette does, it gets even worse.
I personally would LOVE to buy a Corvette EV convertible. But I don't have my hopes up of it ever happening. The demand just isn't there.
There's a reasonable sized overlap there. EVs might not interest the "I love the sound inefficiency as literal sound walls" crowd, but the performance car enthusiasts that love torque curves and min/maxing them will eventually begrudgingly admit that EVs have some very lovely torque curves and many of them even know and salivate that most of those curves are software-defined making min/maxing them a fun videogame to play (possibly hazardously while driving, though that's part of the sport of Formula E) rather than buying and installing expensive aftermarket parts.
Brand loyalty I'll give you in that I have heard a lot of "the day Corvette makes an EV is the day Corvette is dead to me" hyper-masculine statements, but hyper-masculinity is political. (So is hyper-partisanship in many cases.)
I think the path forward for GM, and most other companies that still make engines is plug-in/gas hybrids. The electric transmission (should be?) more desirable to car enthusiasts, and the engine can still be a moat, though I'd say it quickly starts to feel redundant(to me).
I still think 2019 GM was correct in killing the Volt that hybrids are a worst of both worlds in engineering trade-offs and strictly one or the other is the best approach for both. I also still partly agree that 2019 was about the right year to end that "transition tech" phase, at the very least as a political message (that wasn't correctly received).
(I say that as someone who still owns a 2012 Volt as my only car, but mostly not because I still think I need a hybrid but because I want an full electric, reasonably sized sedan or hatchback, and all the car companies decided Americans only want EV crossovers/SUVs/assault tanks/land yachts this decade.)
All hybrids (Prius included, and especially noted) are just sub-par Full EVs with extra weight albatrossed around their necks when gas gets hard to buy and it does seem like past time to stop sinking good money after multiple decades of sunk costs in ICE car engines.
I think it would be more obvious if the US had more of the cheap EVs that China and Europe are producing, but we all know the US right now isn't politically aligned to have nice things.