over 100,000 Toyota Prius were sold in 2016. Tesla is likely to be the top company in the electric vehicle space for quite some time. but to act like they invented the market and no one else was working on it is just silly. it's like saying that Bill Gates invented computers
I'm not being literal when I say "nobody was working on electric cars".
If you need to me to clarify it: the scale and rate of progress in EV was severely accelerated by Tesla. ICE auto companies had no incentive to develop electric. The space was unprofitable, had many technical challenges.
Do you think Tesla would be where it's at today if Musk didn't get involved? How many times did Tesla almost die?