Certainly the opportunity existed. Certain pre-conditions like battery tech and environmental concern were met.

That doesn't detract from Musk's achievement. Toyota could have been making EVs since the early 2000's. Volvo, Nissan, and Ford all had EVs available before Teslas became widely available. If EVs were such a trivial eventuality, these companies would have been dominant players in that space.

But Tesla went on to become the world's most valuable car company. Musk single handedly changed the public perception of EVs, and he kickstarted the entire industry. The major auto makers would not take EVs as seriously if not for him.

I am not a Musk shill. I think he is unhinged. You can go through my comment history as proof of my dislike of Teslas if you care to.

Starting a company and growing it to be one of the top 10 largest companies in the world is a massive achievement. Popularizing EVs is a massive achievement. Your opinions on Musk do not change that.

Why are you making this about 'simping for Musk'? It doesn't matter if someone was predicting it. Most people making most predictions are wrong. Also, things don't happen because someone predicted it.

https://www.forbes.com/2011/03/17/why-predictions-bad-leader...

https://newmr.org/blog/most-predictions-are-wrong-so-lets-ke...

https://fs.blog/future-babble-why-expert-predictions-fail-an...

In fact, though, given that for their first 15 years or so Tesla was willing to lose $10k+ per car, it seems likely to me that they actually delayed other car manufacturers from making more electric cars as those reasonable companies were unwilling to compete with someone willing to throw away that much money.