Electric cars were a gimmick before Tesla, almost no-one was taking them seriously, after Tesla that changed.
In fact "affordable" Teslas (model S) came after competition like Leaf which was a best seling electric car up until recently.
also, if you ask me, a super expensive sports car should still count as a "gimmick". I give Tesla credit for reigniting excitement about EVs, but lets not oversell their achievement.
The what?
> the Ford Ranger EV
The what?
> honda ev plus
The what?
> Toyota RAV4 EV
The what?
If you mention Tesla to literally anyone, they know about the cars. The product, and the marketing of it, have definitely brought EV's into the mainstream. Before that, very few consumers knew anything about EVs, maybe with the exception of the GM EV1. Now electric cars are a common sight on the road.
Nisan Leaf was way more recognisable than a Tesla for a while.
And also things like Prius really prooved the point that electricity can be used to power cars.
Not knocking on Tesla, they have a great brand and helped spark interest and speed up demand for EVs. But saying they advanced the adoption of EVs by 10 years is ridiculous.
I honestly don't think we'd have seen the same level of EV adoption by now if not for Tesla. But then I don't really know how to quantify it for arguments sake.
Did it really ? Tesla rode on the advances of battery tech driven by mobile devices, there were other EV efforts arround the time Tesla came up. I agree they recognised it early on and made it fasionable + they had this narrative driven market valuation which pressured other automotive execs to invest in the EV narrative. But 10 years is way too much - battery tech advancements were bound to bring us to this point even without Tesla R&D (I think they only started using their advancements recently, before that it was just stock batteries ?), and there was enough money in batteries from other markets to drive advancement without the EV push.
Not denying Tesla played a big positive role in this, but certainly not 10 years IMO.