... that Tesla claims are the owners' responsibilties:

https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/tesla-musk-steering-suspension/

...but so far the prices are too much for me.

needs to find a way to bring the cost of EVs down to combat global warming.

...put a damper on the excessive profit margins somehow.

Most EVs have CVTs, which are notoriously bad in many vehicles. From what I read, they don't tend to handle torque very well. I suspect that is the reason for the issues with Ford's full-sized Lighting EV pickups.

If results with traditional automatic transmissions aren't working out well, the simple solution would seem to be manual transmissions.

...with an electric motor, there isnct any real need to have multiple gears, the motor itself adjusts the speed output by the speed of the motor.

Multiple gears are necessary on combustion engines because the mechanics of the engine itself has limits that need to brought down with each gear (or something like that).

Electric bikes have gears--both internal hubs and derailers--because even though there's far less torque involved with a bike, there are limits.

I guess the research and development of EVs still has way to go!

I know it took quite a while to get from the Model T to today's advanced designs.