Hmm. The battery stuff is hard, yes, but only one company has to figure it out. Battery companies sell to everyone. All the battery breakthroughs so far have benefited every EV player. The actual meat-and-potatoes of Tesla's battery tech is actually from Panasonic, who has no problems selling cells to whoever wants to buy.

And EVs are absolutely not zero maintenance, that's just a fantasy. Even in dream-world where we have tires that never need to be replaced and no oil changes, batteries are always going to be a large part of the car's cost and only last a few hundred charge cycles.