IN 2011 TESLA stated an aim of becoming “the most compelling car company of the 21st century, while accelerating the world’s transition to electric vehicles”. At the time this was easy to dismiss as crackers. In the eight years since its founding in 2003 it had manufactured a piddling 1,650 EVs. Its first big-selling car, the Model S, had yet to hit the road.
Today it is almost as mad to argue that Elon Musk, the carmaker’s boss since 2008, has not achieved that goal. His company, a rare insurgent in an industry with formidable barriers to entry, has grown at neck-snapping speed. In the
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