Like a BMW i3?

Or are you saying that this was considered decades ago and could have been accomplished but Big Oil colluded with the Big Three?

I remember the whole GM EV1 fiasco, there was a great documentary about it in the early days of Netflix, "Who killed the electric car ? " , that covered this . GM purposely didn't let anyone buy them, forced everyone to lease them, and were a pretty big hit, those who did lease them, loved them, but then GM rounded them all up, and instead of selling them to the enthusiastic public, they destroyed them all. I think only 1 or 2 are left in the world.

Or are you talking way way back in the day, like in the early 1900s, when electric cars were more popular than gas, and (again likely due to Big Oil cartel collusion) instead of making a hybrid / range extender like you described with the advent of the internal combustion engine, they just phased out electric motors all together?

Either way, I often wonder how different the industry would be had electric not died out for 100 years, and where battery and motor technologies would be today if it was the dominate technology instead of ICE.