Falcon 9's reusable first stage has been claimed by reputable people to be impossible, before it happened. Not just "economically not worth pursuing", which was wrong but forgivable, but straight "impossible".

He made it cool to drive an electric car.

He shifted a whole industry towards a new paradigm. Look at Germany, they are desperate to catch up with Tesla, finally moving into electric cars. Without Elon they would keep selling their Diesel scam for the next decades.

Actually it was a bunch of Phd students from some Californian Uni that discovered the vw diesel scam. There is a short documentary about them online. Elon has no credit whatsoever in dieselgate.

However, he did make electric cars something an average person would like to have. He also chose to make it work using the same inefficient principle of hauling 2 tons of steel to transport a single person. What he made is an electric luxury car, not a car for the masses that can replace average Joe's car. Is there anything wrong with that? No, there isn't, but let's not pretend a $35k (in US - much more in EU) car that requires hours of charging after driving 250 miles unless you happen to have Tesla's superchargers on your way is a new "volkswagen - a people's car". Also I find it disingenuous to advertise full battery capacity while at the same time recommending people use only 60% of it "for longevity".

Many people don't buy new cars, but choose to buy 5-8 year old cars that are really good value if they were maintained well. It remains to be seen how Teslas behave in that market.

It would be really revolutionary if someone could create and market an electric car that was truly innovative for example: much lighter than current cars while still being safe during collision, use fuel cell technology with fuel such as methanol or similar that can be created in a sustainable way, even using a fuel cell with mined hydrocarbons and electric drive would provide for a huge reduction in emissions due to increase in efficiency.

Do Teslas have a role to play in reducing emissions? Yes, definitely, but let's not present them as a single solution to all individual transport problems.

Jesus, technology evolves. This is a good start.

Nobody is presenting them as a single solution to all individual transport problems. Also nobody is pretending that this is the new "people's car".

He certainly made it more cool than my hero and his precursor ;-)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinclair_C5

When pray tells come into the conversation... :)

Just made electric cars mainstream...

Convince people to give him a lot of money to set on fire.

I mean even if both Tesla and SpaceX close tomorrow, he already achieved more in both companies than most of the current "unicorns".

He successfully made popular mass market electric vehicle, and dragged whole auto moto industry behind. There were other electric cars before tesla. But tesla made it cool, and made the rest of the industry trying hard to catch up.

SpaceX also is not the first private space firm, with their own rocket, But it's by far the most successful one, and lowered the cost of entry to space by significant amount.

Also It's probably the first private space company that has rockets that can compete with most government ones.

I am not rich enough to be buying individual stocks, so I have no personal stake in this.

Well yes, but he's the cheapest provider of self-propelling pyres, and the only provider of pyres that can be used multiple times.