Whoever invented lithium batteries created the electric car sector (In fact he won a Nobel prize for it, https://news.uchicago.edu/story/john-b-goodenough-shares-nob...). Everything else has existed since the 1800s (although it has been refined over time). There were even attempts at electric cars in the 1800s. In fact, almost 40% of all cars in 1900 were electric! If they had lithium batteries in 1890 we would have been driving electric cars for the last 130 years.

GM had a great electric car in the mid 90s that couldn't compete due to lead acid batteries being heavy and having poor energy density (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_EV1). Put Lithium batteries in an EV1 and people still wouldn't have wanted it because oil prices were low, but it beat the Model S to market by nearly 20 years and again given a better battery technology like lithium would probably have led to a majority of cars being electric today.