Actually this is not the correct sentiment. Elon musk was definitely responsible for the design decisions and success of roadster+ and what tesla ended up being. The early prototype didn’t really have anything super novel and the roadster and other cars weren’t like, a ripoff or remix of whatever prototypes they had. It was a company that was generally setting out to take advantage of high voltage high current switching that had only become possible recently for driving AC motors with duty cycle variation.

The label “founder” is definitely not misplaced. But I suppose it’s a matter of semantics.