I disagree, this was an example of the mindset, that caused electric cars to be unpopular before the Tesla S.
Because the batteries were expensive, everybody made small cars that were basically useless for anything but very short trips, and sales of them were almost non existent for good reason.

This car came out even AFTER it IMO was shown to be a bad model to make such short range cars.

Luckily today VW-group makes many attractive models, that have good range and competitive prices. With the high quality throughout all components of the car many love here in Europe.