> otherwise right now wed still be looking at gas vehicles
But is it really true?
It feels to me that Tesla might have only sped up the EV market emergence by a couple of years and given the growth of battery's capacity/price/density over the years it was inevitable.
Sheer force of will did Tesla manage to bring around the EV market. Noone else had any interest in doing it and theres no way any of the incumbent car companies would have pursued it even if it was more viable from a battery perspective.
Any other reading of that era of industry would be re-writing a narrative to diminish what Tesla really did. It is too bad he has earned so many detractors (through his own mistakes) because many of his accomplishments are exceptional.
But in case you're not. The main blocker to production and adoption of electric personal vehicles has been battery capacity and charging infrastructure.
Electric vehicles where already the norm where the battery was not necessary (trains). And in many cities there were electric buses for decades even though they were very impractical because they needed to be connected to the electric grid while driving.
The moment the car industry would realize that the battery is big enough to cover decent range and would charge reasonably fast the switch to EV would be inevitable. Tesla was was simply the first to make a bet that the get future is now.
In my city we have now a fleet of electric buses, electric trash collecting trucks (live quality improvement due to how quiet they are and how loud those huge diesel engines were). I really don't think the trash collection truck manufacturers decided to go electric because of Tesla.
Im not being sarcastic. That is absolutely not true - there is no way any of the major car companies in North America had any intention of changing up their operations and product offering. They have all been dragged in unwillingly and dragging their feet to the party (except in China where they were directed to by the governing party).
You are rewriting history to make it sound like it was an inevitability which it absolutely was not and still is not an inevitability. I am not sure if you were alive and in industry at the time but it sounds like you are much younger and are relying on reading as opposed to experiencing the world.
Heavy duty municipal vehicles are a completely different market not comparable. Cities have mandates that aren't always cost such as quality of life - that and they can draw from their tax base + these vehicles always return to base. Again not comparable.
But is it really true?
It feels to me that Tesla might have only sped up the EV market emergence by a couple of years and given the growth of battery's capacity/price/density over the years it was inevitable.