Like a celebrity politician, installing a CEO who has achieved celebrity infamy or fame adds hype to whatever they touch, orthogonal to if they deserve celebrity or not. But also, how many other serious EV companies were there in 2006? Basically none. So said engineers and celebrity guy got to define a category for a while. But then he jumped the shark with a double "Roman" Nazi salute and customers fled to the myriad of other competitors that since developed and arguably surpassed (like BYD super fast charging, that one can't buy in America).

> how many other serious EV companies were there in 2006? Basically none

Yeah, thats my point. I'm reasonably confident that without Musk, the answer would still be none (or at least the transformation would have been way slower).

I'm not a fan of Musk, but this notion that he's never done anything worthwhile is also clearly wrong.

Except you're making the error of erroneously conflating invention with marketing trickery. He's only done the latter, ever. He's never made anything of value himself.

I don't really care about invention in this space, as electric cars have been invented multiple times over the last century.

What matters (from a climate perspective) is getting those cars into the hands of people to reduce the pointless burning of fossil fuels. And Musk, however you may feel about him (I have not been a fan since about 2015/16) did a great job there.

Your argument is pretty analogous to saying that Jobs had nothing to do with Apple's success.