Tesla's main success story seems to have been the US, presumably due to very lackluster competition. The US isn't a huge market for electric cars, tho.
The Model T wasn't the first car, but it was the first widely accessible and usable one for the masses. Tesla's innovation is more comparable to that.
That said, Elon should have never been in charge of a public company. He's good at challenging the status quo and should keep doing that in new markets. He's a terrible person to be in charge of an established company (which tesla very much is now!)
> Tesla's cumulative production of the Roadster reached 1,000 cars in January 2010
So about the same time as the Nissan Leaf, a rather more masses-friendly car...
The Tesla options are all extremely high performance cars. They're luxury oriented but the interiors left a bit to be desired. Either way the overlap between the market Tesla capture and the leaf captured are almost non-existent.