AFAIK they still have the engineering chops to start building modest and practical daily drivers instead of unobtainably priced and ludicrously oversized trucks and SUVs. Surrendering most of the marketshare pie to Japan, Korea and China is a choice that US automakers have made.
Right? Make a Ford Escort EV that starts at $25,000, with a 200 mile range, that can fast charge from 25% to 75% in 5 minutes, and they won't be able to build them fast enough for all the people who would want to buy them.
They can't make profitable, affordable EV yet.. They just don't know how to do it.
People are like oh but the Bolt sold well and was affordable. Sure, at a loss, on a platform not designed to scale up and be profitable at high quantities.
So yes they're building big EVs so they don't bankrupt themselves and yes that then gives them a self fulfilling prophecy.
Edit: just to add, they're using the learnings from these bigger, still not profitable EVs to learn how to make profitable EVs.