To my knowledge, Tesla Motors were one of the first electric vehicle sellers for the ‘general’ public.
For context, the Model S debuted in 2012, and to this day, it still seems to be a very popular car.
How come other car manufactures cannot (or have taken many years) to come close to the performance and popularity of the Tesla models? Is it that hard to create 500km+ ranged electric vehicles? Tesla did it 10+ years ago, why has the rest not?
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A couple of things that Tesla did well:
First, they made “cool” electric cars. Prior to Tesla, the electric and hybrid cars were generally popular with those concerned with the environment. There was nothing really sexy about driving a Prius. But the original Tesla Roadster was basically an electric Lotus. It was a cool looking car.
As someone else stated, Tesla was born into the Silicon Valley world, with a heavy reliance on software. Other car companies used a bit of software, but things like over the air updates was not a thing.
Finally, other car companies ran into the classic “innovators dilemma”. They couldn’t really market electric cars as better than gas because gas powered vehicles were the overwhelming majority of their sales. Tesla didn’t have this problem – they could say “buy a Tesla because it’s a better car than your gas powered car” without attacking their own products.
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