Not to praise him too much but the Tesla he bought and the Tesla that exists today are 99.9% different. You have to have some major chops to take a small start up poking around with the Tesla Roadster concept and make it to factories on three continents producing 1,000,000 cars a year.

I think Musk is a huge ass but also that Tesla really proved that EVs work and mainstream* people want them.

He was Tesla's primary funder at founding and then stepped into the CEO role when he determined the founder wasn't getting it done. 99% of the amazing engineering, design, and, most importantly, sales, occurred after Elon took over as CEO.