> It feels like the transition from a flip phone to an iPhone in 2008.

It seems like the analogy is very apt.

Lots of people pointing out flaws with Tesla's cars and saying that when the incumbents make it into the market they will squash them. Same thing happened with the iPhone - it didn't have multitasking, copy/paste, mms (all things that even standard dumbphones had). Nokia, Blackberry are huge Apple has no chance.

A product can simultaneously be inferior in some (or many) aspects, but still feel somehow be on another plane of feeling like the future.

[product talk aside, Tesla's real problem seems to be execution - can they actually build the damn cars, and can they make a profit on them?]