Look, electric cars are easy to build. I feel funny saying this but, well, it isn't rocket science. The vast majority of people have no need for the gizmos a Tesla has. They need to get from point A to point B and back in comfort and with reliability.
Is that difficult to achieve?
Well, considering an electric car has a thousand or more less parts than an internal combustion car, probably not.
Is that enough? Is the lack of an IC engine enough?
No.
You have to know how to design a chassis and suspension. There are plenty of people who do that for a living. No rocket science there.
You have to know how to make a good electric motor and controller. There are plenty of folks who do that too. Look at the electric forklift industry. Electric motors and their controls are solved problems, from switched reluctance through PM BM to AC motors, loads of people know how to design and build them. I'd venture to say a good number of them are made in China these days.
Well, how about batteries and battery chargers? Panasonic probably has that covered pretty well. They'd throw an entire engineering team at you just to sell you batteries.
I mean, an electric car is an overgrown RC car. Very, very simple at the core. The complexity comes in if you want to turn it into a computer on wheels. And, I would venture to say, a lot of that is probably not that difficult these days. Load it up with ChromeOS or something like that and go.
I am not diminishing the amount of work it would be to design and build a new electric car. It's monumental. All I am saying is I don't think it is as much about inventing new technology as much as money and execution in a business where most of the moving parts are well known solved problems.
I think Tesla --and the world-- needs to take this very seriously. The way the Chinese piss all over intellectual property and manipulate markets is despicable.