The change Elon Musk brought to the EV industry and rocket launches is permanent. Doesn't matter what happens to his companies in the future. What he did has changed both industries permanently. Everybody is making an EV now and everybody is trying to make some sort of reusable rocket.
One of the things to keep in mind about Musk's various projects is that every single one of them has a practical application for Mars colonization. Reusable rockets to get to Mars relatively cheaply, solar panels/grid-scale batteries to keep the colony powered, and mass quantities of phase-array networked commsats instead of laying thousands of kilometres of fiber are the obvious ones, and discussed at length everywhere. But the others are worth fleshing out.
The trick to colonizing Mars quickly is to deliver the most bang-for-the-kilogram in landed mass. If a single Starship can land enough material to build a few big oxygen and methane tanks, all you have is a few big oxygen and methane tanks. If it lands enough mass for a "The Martian" style Aries-type habitat, all you have is a habitat. But if a Starship lands a few fast, miniaturized, automated, and electric tunnel-boring systems and the spare parts to keep them maintained, you can build as many radiation-proof habitats and oxygen/methane storage tanks as you can - underground. I would bet good money on the very first Mars-landed Starships having at least one full tunnel-boring rig (with spare parts) on board each one - if not for immediate use under time-lagged remote control, then in preparation for direct operation by the first landed humans.
As for hyperloop, it's a heavy-cargo electric train designed to run in atmosphere that's 1% the thickness of Earth's. On Mars you wouldn't even need to enclose the rails. This is what you'd want a decade down the road for transporting mass quantities of ice to methalox production/storage sites. Of course it's far less practical on Earth than current alternatives, which is likely why Musk's total Hyperloop involvement is limited to a SpaceX-sponsored tech demo. And I think they're only doing even that minimal investment because they want to see how electric trains work at Martian atmospheric pressure.
I would consider it Tesla’s and Musk’s ultimate success if/when the whole auto industry moved away from internal combustion engine. iirc this is how musk defines his own success as well.
Homework:
1. Use an infotainment system from an “old guard” car maker. 2. Use Android Auto, CarPlay or the Tesla dash. 3. Repeat 1.
So much of the experience of your car is terrible because it’s an afterthought to these companies. They hire people to tick a box at the least expense possible.
I drive a Nissan Leaf. The build quality is pretty good. The battery life isn’t spectacular but it wasn’t particularly expensive either, and it’s all I need...
But it’s no Tesla.
Last week I rented a car. I gave up on the inscrutable infotainment system and just used my phone, with it flopping around the car because there was nowhere to fix it in place.
Edit: the phones are not just better, they are constantly being improved, and the car system stays static. The phones also cost next to nothing compared with replacing a broken system in your car.
Android Auto now works on a handset over bluetooth. Apple being Apple, you have to buy an entire new head unit or a new car with built-in Carplay to use it.
It's everywhere now though, even the used econobox my family bought this year has it.
Ironically, the major brand to NOT support it is Tesla, making it actually a mark AGAINST them.
My Leaf’s functionality is so tied up in the dash unit that it can’t realistically be replaced without losing access to critical functions. Ironically, the very lowest end model is the only one that can have it’s head unit replaced - and I’d have bought one except it mandates leasing the battery which wasn’t for me.
Not everyone can replace their head unit and most used econoboxes do not have head units anywhere close to recent enough to support either platform.
That sounds like a pretext to call victory when faced with an unavoidable defeat, similar to the fox and the grapes fable. The auto industry was already moving to electric cars prior to Musk.
For example, the Toyota Prius was released to the general public in 1997, having won Car of the Year in 1998. Tesla was founded in 2003.
Arguably Musk's contribution was dispelling the notion that electric vehicles were just glorified golf carts made for flimsy Europeans, and in the process marketed a Veblen good that just so happened to be an electric car.
But the Prius is not an electric car. It's a petrol-electric hybrid where the electric part is merely a clever way to optimise the petrol engine usage. You can't drive more than 1 or 2 km with the electric motors.
Indeed even now Toyota don't have any fully electric models and they are very much behind the other manufacturers in other than hybrid technology. So I can't say that Toyota is a good example for this.
Which isn't to say he didn't show the world that you can build an electric car with Lithium ion batteries that looks better than an Prius.