It's entirely possible that progress is being made in areas not immediately visible to the public.

You see the horses replaced with cars - what do you see of the advances in sewage management, or plastics recycling?

Also, an electric car is still a car, but it's still very different from a combustion engine, or a coal steam-engine, for that matter. Does the fact that a horse is so dissimilar to an electric/petrol car mean the two are relatively similar? That seems to be a fairly superficial distinction of change.