I wouldn't have said that Tesla just imitated existing car companies. Can you elaborate?
If Tesla's prime value proposal was to invent some tech that will do something revolutionary, they would have gone bust like Theranos. Instead, they built charging network and kick ass infotainments system that made their electric cars practical.
The Problem is that it didn't happen, because Elizabeth Holmes was a control-freak fraudster. She specifically siloed them to try and control information, which is the exact opposite of "put em in a room together".
Not sure what you mean. They are the ones that made the tech good enough for mainstream adoption. Your post reads like the “iPhone didn’t have any revolutionary tech” types.
What iPhone had was a revolutionary user interface that provided the outstanding user experience despite lacking a lot of features and functions.
I would argue that the addition of the app store is what made the iPhone really jump phones forward.
[0] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/bu...
So, this is a common idea, but it doesn't _really_ gel with reality. The Tesla S, Nissan Leaf, VW's first electric car platform, and the Renault Z-E platform are contemporaries to within about a year (iirc it was Leaf, then an unsuccessful Z-E-based car, then eGolf in limited quantity, then S, then mass-market eGolf and Renault Zoe). Of these, the Leaf sold far more units than the S over its lifetime; the Zoe was about the same as the S, the eGolf somewhat less.
Tesla didn't have a _true_ mass-market car until the Model 3 some years later.
The litmus test is what cars you see on the roads of Wyoming. There are plenty of model 3s, and a leaf was an extremely rare site because the car was nearly useless outside of a city commute.
Given that US adoption of electric cars lagged other developed world countries, and thus early electric cars were generally designed for European, Chinese, and to some extent Japanese, market preferences, that seems like an extremely weird litmus test. Tesla _was_ the first company to release a mass-market car aimed at the _US_ market (or at least the first credible attempt; the Leaf was available in the US but was just too far from US market preferences), but the Chinese and European markets already had mass-market electric cars.
Which would be fine, if they weren't claiming robotaxis any day now.
had musk not purchased tesla after the roadster was built, all of his claims would have been utter bull. now that there was an entry electric car he could spin any tale or justify any hype by pointing to the one functioning model.
from there it was absolutely the modern car manufacturers game, promise a concept, deliver some part of it, talk about next quarter.
frankly having level 4 self driving pulled of by mercedes in california first should be the ultimate proof. merc did it in house faster without hyping it. wild
He invested before even the first prototype roadster was built. At no point did he “purchase” Tesla.