> There are many things I dislike about Tesla. But I genuinely believe they are responsible for bringing EVs to market ~3 years before it would have happened without them.
This feels vaguely ahistorical. The best-selling electric car platform in Europe today is the Renault Z-E platform (or at least it was; VW may have overtaken by now). That platform was announced in 2009 or so, with the first cars in 2011, and the first Zoe (the popular car based on the platform) in 2012. The Nissan Leaf came out in 2010. The Tesla Model S came out in 2012.
So given that, it's hard to see what Tesla had to do with it, really. Some of the most popular models came to market BEFORE Tesla (if you ignore the roadster, a contemporary of the Z-E concepts, which you almost certainly should).
Honestly if either the brand or charging were as big a deal as all that, I'd expect them to be doing better in Europe. The US seems to be the only remaining territory where they're the market leader, and they may be a bit stickier there, but it's not clear that EU sales of, say, the Zoe or id3 would be any different in the parallel universe where Tesla never existed. Those sell because they've hit a price/range point, and that's more due to the relentless slow progress of battery technology than anything else.
Not to say they're not a significant electric car manufacturer, but "coming third in the biggest western market, behind Renault, who apparently still exist" is not a great argument for them being either a market leader or having a particularly sticky brand.
I don't see how that works as an analogy _at all_. The iPhone lead to a complete change in what a phone _was_, with the Nokia view of a phone (and even of a smartphone) fading out.
By contrast, a Leaf or Zoe that you buy today is just a better version of the Leaf or Zoe you could have bought before the Model S came out.
This feels vaguely ahistorical. The best-selling electric car platform in Europe today is the Renault Z-E platform (or at least it was; VW may have overtaken by now). That platform was announced in 2009 or so, with the first cars in 2011, and the first Zoe (the popular car based on the platform) in 2012. The Nissan Leaf came out in 2010. The Tesla Model S came out in 2012.
So given that, it's hard to see what Tesla had to do with it, really. Some of the most popular models came to market BEFORE Tesla (if you ignore the roadster, a contemporary of the Z-E concepts, which you almost certainly should).