> I think Tesla 'proved' the viability of long range BEVs the same way Newton proved calculus to Liebniz (and I'm only being slightly hyperbolic). Some ideas/di

> I think Tesla 'proved' the viability of long range BEVs the same way Newton proved calculus to Liebniz (and I'm only being slightly hyperbolic). Some ideas/discoveries/technologies are more or less inevitable as the newly-existing but disparate building-blocks are there, waiting for a receptive mind to piece everything together and usually with a surprising level or synchrony. This effect can be observed often in the case of low investment advances like mathematical breakthroughs, inventions that are limited to a bunch of papers, gadgets or Uber for X type, X as a service startups etc. But, it is evidently not true for hard problems, advances that require huge investments, bear enormous risks and uncertain payoff. The people who go for the relatively low hanging fruits know this very well, evident in their rush to the market, patent or to publish in academic journals. In contrast, the hard problems, like landing a man on the moon, measuring the higgs boson, retro propulsive landing of orbital rockets or, case in point, the development of long range BEVs would not have happened if someone would have had the ability and courage to go all in at enormous cost and risk. Progress is not automatic! It may appear though but in reality people are sometimes willing to pay enormous prices for lofty goals. Or they don't and progress simply does not happen. In fact, these tasks are so hard, that none of the achievements mentioned above have been repeated so far, despite arguably ample time for copy cats. No one but NASA went to the moon, no second LHC was built, only SpaceX has landed orbital boosters and the 2012 Model S still has more range than any non Tesla BEV. Another evidence is that there are problems that we know are arguably solvable and desirable, yet we still haven't solved them, e.g. putting a man or women on Mars, switching to 100% renewable energies, fusion, making certain diseases extinct etc.