Electric motors have huge applications across most industries for longer than combustion engines. Calling them unoptimized is quite a stretch. There're some car specific optimizations to be done, sure, but it's very mature technology, with little potential for breakthroughs.
For example Axial flux motors are still very much being developed with a steady flow of breakthroughs (Magnax, Emrax), and have mind bending power to weight ratios. A lot of the current issues seem to be around heat dissipation, which is where I am hoping some of the next big wins are.
I'm a bit sad that currently easily available motors are currently not in the same league as Tesla (I have a 50kw Me1616 and Sevcon 4 sitting on my bench) but it looks like that is slowly changing.
They are real technology, in the sense that this is where over 100 years of optimising every aspect of ICE has got us to. Fascinatingly complex, extremely well engineered, and depending on the brand still relatively likely to break down within the first few years.
The engines are also longer designed to be maintained without special processes, and are increasingly designed around emission regulations. To the point where a lot of the complexity is in emission systems and the cars are choked by their own extremely lean fuel maps.
Electric motors on the other hand are still relatively unoptimised and the potential in things like torque vectoring is amazing. I'll miss driving manual, but it's getting just about impossible to buy those now anyway.