This is what I've been thinking for awhile. A huge number of the detractors predicted that Tesla would get crushed by commoditized goods that they spent the R&D dollars on, namely batteries. But I don't think the capacity is even remotely there for other manufacturers to come in and just buy up energy storage on the open market.

Eventually it'll show up due to demand but the flywheel is slow to turn. I think a 3-4 year head start is about right and also in line with most technological head starts (Bezos famously talked about it some time ago and why AWS is the reason they are winning since it had no viable competitor for 7+ years), but like Amazon/AWS, if it takes any longer than that... you're handing Elon a huge amount of time.