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Sadly, under the last ACO LMP1 regs, hybrids equaled speed. And as with anything else in racing, speed often costs money and resources.
Biggest problem is that the ACO with their rules prioritized one way almost to exclusivity on how to get speed. It's also one thing to put a hugely powerful hybrid system into a road car, you magnify those difficulties by putting one into a race car whilst using design principals that worked pre-hybrid.
Biggest single problem is weight. Hybrids add weight because you have in effect two engines in one vehicle. That weight isn't dead weight because it's doing something, but it's weight nonetheless. You lower the weight limits while incentivizing power of such a system, that's where you get a lot of costs of developing the cars.
We have to remember that LMP2 had weight increases from 775 to 825 (800 ALMS), and to 900 and now 930kg over the past 10 years or so. The reason for that was to discourage teams from pulling a Porsche RS Spyder and making a LMP2 car sell for LMP1 money because of it having LMP1 tech to make it reach 775 or less kg with ballast.
I know that ditching things like fuel flow and raising weight limits sound like going backwards, but the ACO are now paying for pricing out privateers and smaller manufacturers with rules that either favored one way of doing things, or favored their whims and whims of what handful of carmakers that have made LMP1 cars since the turn of the decade.
IMO, the problem was living in the moment and not having good enough longer term planning.
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