No matter what your opinion of Elon Musk, his dogged determination to position Tesla as the leading purveyor of electric vehicles (or EVs) has successfully catapulted the United States back to the top of the automotive world. It has not only awakened Detroit automakers to the road ahead, Tesla’s success – and eventual profitability – has inspired any number of Musk wannabes to follow in his footsteps, spawning such American electric vehicle startups as Rivian and Lucid.
All of a sudden, auto industry pundits no longer marvel at the wonders of German engineering, or the genius of Japanese industrial might. Like them, even China, now the world’s workroom, has one word on their mind: Tesla. And the company’s superiority in EVs is proven by the fact that everyone wants to beat them, including Mercedes-Benz, the company that created and sold the world’s first automobile powered by an internal combustion engine in 1886.
Compounding their EV envy is that the American upstart not only opened a factory in Germany, but now outsells Mercedes-Benz in the company’s homeland, and has become the top-selling luxury brand in the United States, the world’s second-largest car market.
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