I think a large part of it is cultural: Tesla is seen as a tech company, and we root for tech companies. Especially when they're seen as "disrupting" and taking on entrenched companies in an industry. Personally, I do think it's a bit exaggerated. But on the other hand, I think that Tesla did help the EV market bloom a bit faster than otherwise would have happened. Other car companies did know about EVs and some even experimented with EVs before Tesla (see: GM EV1), but the fact that Tesla started profiting off of this market segment made other companies want to enter the market segment earlier rather than later.