Have you forgotten about the Nissan Leaf? Tesla created the market for expensive sports car EVs, but Nissan made the market for EVs for the mainstream.

The Tesla Roadster came out first, by a couple years, but only sold about 2500 over its lifetime. By the time Tesla got its second model out, a couple years after Leaf went on sale, Leaf had 50k sales.

It took until 2020 for Tesla cumulative sales to catch up with Leaf cumulative sales.

Maybe that's true but maybe it also isn't? Tesla or no Tesla, China would've thrown incentives at domestic EV makers to reduce their dependence on oil imports. Without Tesla maybe there would be fewer EVs in North America and Europe today. But I don't see history playing out very differently elsewhere. The economics are just too strong.