A combination of "right choices"
Just look under the hood of the Leaf, Focus Electric, etc. and see the mess in there. Compare that mess to what Tesla has come up with on the rear axle of their car.
The dinosaurs are playing catch-up and they're flopping around. That's why Daimler and Toyota are buying Tesla's tech.
This is a good summary. Tesla designed an electric car from the ground up using people who understood electric technology.
Going from the Roadster to Model S, humorously, several of the changes are actually reversions to "traditional car" tech for areas where the "all-modern all-electric" tech in the Roadster was not getting sufficient reliability (for instance, the standard automotive 'buffer' battery for the auxiliary equipment which was added to model S).
For some reason, all the old-line car makers (except Nissan) have been trying to *convert* a gasoline car design to an electric car design, and the results are predictably poor. I think it has to do with what they have expertise in. They don't know electric motors, so they don't think like electric motor designers. They think like gasoline engine designers.
Nissan is actually approaching design roughly the right way, but
(1) Nissan is at least 3 years behind Tesla (Roadster 2008, Leaf 2011 -- and the Leaf was missing stuff which was already in the Roadster, such as battery temperature management)
(2) Nissan made the mistake of targeting the bottom of the market for its experimental car, rather than the top. While this may work for a large carmaker, it will not generate the cachet or reputation which drives future sales, and it will not generate the profit margins necessary to cover development, so Nissan will need to continue supporting its electric car research from other income. Tesla looked at the business models of successful new car companies in the late 19th/ early 20th century, and copied the ones which worked; they *all* started at the top of the market and worked down. Even Ford.
So far, nearly every electric carmaker has either made the mistake of trying to convert a gas car (or the worse mistake of making 'hybrids') or made the mistake of starting at the bottom of the market. There are a few exceptions, but Aptera hit management problems, and effectively got taken over from its inspired engineers by non-engineer businessmen who wrecked the company (which is unfortunately typical of startups, as I know to my chagrin). There are some designs with sprung wheel motors (like trains have) which have huge potential, but they haven't found financing yet. Elon Musk was an engineer first and then a competent businessman, so, avoided the startup problems.
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So when Tesla becomes a big company, is that how you think they'll be?
Absolutely. But it's a process of "institutional decay". It'll take a while. Ford wasn't like this when Henry Ford was running it -- Ford was nimble and innovative and willing to kill his old products with new products. Ford only *became* like this over the decades.
I think it's a problem with any institution which has lasted for a long time -- it ossifies. I would say it's happened with the US Government -- every "new" democracy uses party-proportional representation and a Westminster-style "prime minister" system, because our system has some serious flaws; when US experts advised Germany and Japan on their new Constitutions after WWII, the US experts told them to do these things and not to copy the US system; but we won't consider changing our system because of inertia, status quo bias, etc.
Toyota also started out as a nimble upstart and is now an ossified institution. It will inevitably happen with Tesla too. However, we could easily have several decades before it happens with Tesla. That's good enough for me.
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Tesla has made it very clear that it's not aiming -- ever -- to compete with Kia. The Model S, Model X, and Gen III are all aimed at the higher end market: compare to BMW 5/6/7, X5, and 3 series. Econoboxes are not on Tesla's strategy roadmap.
I don't think that's strictly true.
It's important to remember that Tesla's priority is not actually profit. Elon Musk has said outright that his goal is for electric cars to replace gasoline/diesel cars. He was asked what he would do if electric cars took over, but some other company outcompeted Tesla and became the big seller of electric cars.
He basically said he didn't care; he'd have achieved his goal.
Going somewhat far afield philosophically, this gets into what I think is wrong with the modern corporation; they're soulless operations focused on profit, or empire-building, or power, or something. Corporations were supposed to be chartered with a *purpose*, back when they were first established (build a toll bridge; provide electricity; etc.) Tesla has a purpose. This is another thing which makes it different from the big companies, which have long since ceased to have purposes.
So to get back to the original comment which I was responding to, if someone else produces an electric econobox and sells lots of them successfully, Elon will be perfectly happy. He won't feel a need to compete with that manufacturer.
If nobody produces one, though... then he will go ahead and produce one, because it is likely to be necessary for his goal of replacing gasoline cars entirely. (Unless the econobox market is replaced by walking/biking/public transportation, in which case it won't be necessary.)
Likewise, if nobody else manages to make electric trucks successful, eventually Elon will feel that he has to do it, but if someone else (like Smith) makes it work, then Elon won't bother.
