I guess everything is relative and I'm well informed on everything but no, "first new car company in America in a long time" doesn't leap out as a wildly difficult challenge in a time of great innovation. It was followed a couple of years later by Rivian.

First popular electric car...maybe hindsight helps, but it was kind of a matter of time with battery technology improving, although certainly they did a very good job.

Both difficult, for sure, but not quite as mind-blowingly impossible sounding as reusing a rocket dozens of times. To me.