He bought those companies, he didn’t found Them. Anybody can buy a car company or a rocket company if they are rich enough. The only thing he invented was PayPal, and that was not original. And it wasn’t even his idea alone.

Ideas are useless. Execution is everything.

And we can like Elon or not (I'm definitely in the latter camp lately) but if it was as easy as you say, there would be tons of other companies making such breakthroughs.

Execution isn't theoretical research.

Yeah, people forget that during the 90s and 00s it was a well-known meme that we had the tech for electric cars, and oil companies had buried it

Love him or hate him, Elon didn't let his memes be dreams

Most cars were electric in the late 1800s

He hires serious researchers fairly well. It’s a skill. One that doesn’t give much room to play Tony Stark, though.

I don't think he has anything like the Chern-Simons forms to show for.

You're confusing the person who owns the car factory with the person who actually designed and built your car.

They both require skills, but the skillset most sought out in the former group is being really good at self-promoting.