This has happened so many times in the past 50 years in tech: one company creates a superior technology that has small sales compared to the bigger company that commodifies it at scale either through marketing or capex dollars, and thus squashes the smaller inventing company into irrelevance (or out of existence).

BetaMax > VHS

Xerox Park > [ Mac > Windows ]

PS2 Bus > ISA Bus

AltaVista > Google

I'm curious to see if Tesla is hit by this now that the big automakers finally woke up and realized there's a colossal market for low-cost EVs.