Tesla has a design that eliminates the internal combustion engine and its lengthy drive train. By doing so, the car is drastically simplified, with far fewer moving parts. They have about 370 patents. It’s not a prototype, they have 180,000 cars on the road.

The car itself is the safest on the road, engineered better than its nearest competitor, Volvo. Part of the reason is that it doesn’t have an engine that winds up in the lap of the driver in a crash. NHTSA’s roof crush resistance testing machine broke when they tried to test the Model S. It also has the lowest drag coefficient of any production car.

By putting the heaviest part of the car (the fuel source) in the floor, it has one of the lowest centers of gravity of any vehicle, radically improving its handling. It has more trunk space than any other sedan, again because of superior design.

The fact that Tesla can diagnose the car from your garage, distribute software updates without service visits, and has far fewer moving parts terrifies automakers, who see the end of their business model, including their 100 year-old dealer network. Tesla only wants to see the car once per year; soon, it will drive itself to routine visits or come to your house for text drives.

Autopilot offers a benefit to drivers that most engineers would have said was unlikely in anyone’s lifetime, and will eventually dispense with mass transit and privately owned vehicles. (Yup, that one is pretty far out there, but keep in mind that Ford’s strategy for autonomous cars is to produce fleets. They’re already preparing.)

William Morrison produced an electric automobile in 1891, 126 years ago. Rechargeable-battery-powered electric vehicles were produced 75 years ago in WWII because of gasoline rationing. Electric golf carts were popular and being mass produced in 1951.

Technology was never an issue. Electric vehicles are arguable simpler technology than internal combustion systems. The issue has always been competitiveness: the batteries cost more and take longer to charge.

Tesla has not invented anything to fix those fundamental problems. Musk invented a great marketing strategy.

That said, in three years you’ll be able to add the full sensor package, computers and backend support granting full autonomy to a standard car for about $10K. And that car can carry enough gas to travel 400+ miles, takes about 10 minutes to refill at any of 400,000 stations in every corner of the USA. No subsidies, and manufacturing facilities that produce 60 million new cars every year; that’s about 165,000 cars per day. Tesla has produced about 180,000 cars total in its life as a company.

Market cap notwithstanding, Tesla has a long way to go.

The whole electric car concept is a stupid idea that will go nowhere and only appears to work because of subsidies (like the solar and wind generation).

I do give Tesla credit as far as styling and design of the vehicles, but I could not imagine these being really practical.