Curious to see why you think credit goes to Toyota, instead of Tesla?
In other words, Tesla didn't actually make car manufacturers "wake up and go electric." They were going to go electric anyway because it was the obvious tech choice.
Tesla's accomplishment was to show that people were finally ready to buy green cars that looked like normal cars. (The first hybrids and EVs from Toyota and Nissan looked like normal cars, and sold horribly. Toyota and Nissan introduced the butt-ugly designs because green car buyers back in the day wanted distinctive cars to show off their greenliness.)
t neither of those 2 things (Toyota's Prius 2, and California's green car incentives) were successful in making car manufacturers wake up and go electric.
California's green car incentives and fuel efficiency requirements are what drove most car companies to invest in green car tech in the first place.
Car manufacturers never took green cars seriously and never felt the need to transition large amounts of their cars from gas to green. It was only when Tesla started making a splash that car companies took electric cars seriously.
And as to the leaf, I think it was actually modeled after the Prius, and it sold well since there are 400,000 of them out there.
Nissan Leaf owners find it cute that one would think that. And though a hybrid, I think Chevy can get a little credit on that one, too.
So maybe Nissan got a head start, but of all the electric vehicle manufacturers Tesla is the only one moving things forward at the moment with saleable vehicles, that much I'll give them credit for.