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I'm a fan of Elon but he did not bootstrap the first electric car company. Electric cars have been around since the 1800s with a resurgence in the late 1900s. Musk got into electric cars in the 2000s.

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I think if we're being charitable, it's pretty clear that they meant no major electric car companies. And there were no major car companies on the scale of early Ford before early Ford.

I guess if we're being pedantic, he also didn't bootstrap Tesla.

because gas was cheap and batteries back then couldn't go 400 miles and charge in 5 mins. had the economics been flipped, and there were stations on the side of the road with charged batteries for swapping, maybe elon would be forming a petrol sports car company about now.

Strapping a motor into some wheels is not "electric car company". Designing a high-volume, easily produced, long range, beautiful, profitable(!) business out of it, meaning something people actually use - that's bootstrapping an electric car company. We live in a real world, not in some imaginary "that was technically an electric car in 1800"-fairy tale.

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