We also have electric cars and reusable rockets. We can do either; it's just up to us to decide what's most important.

Electric cars aren’t impressive. If you want to actually point to the surprising innovation over that period, it’s computers and the internet.

We had mass market computers 30 years before mass market electric cars, so I think they are quite impressive.

Meanwhile GM built a few https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_EV1 from 1996 to 1999, which all got recalled until 2003 because of corporate politics / 'for business reasons'.

Which is the topic of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Killed_the_Electric_Car? from 2006.

So 'mass market' could very well have been possible about 30 years ago, without Grumpy Management … … …

Even then, having the vision to roll out superchargers, and cannibalise a very successful business, and invest a fortune in a brand new from-scratch platform, is just supremely unlikely in practice. Why jeopardise your bonus?

The first cars were also electric, it’s not groundbreaking technology. Remember the bar here is on the order of flying cars. Only computers come close to clearing that for me.

The Difference Engine design was around even before that, but it would also be bad faith to argue that computers aren't a modern miracle.

We didn’t have diesel computers able to be used by the average person and capable of roughly the same range and volume of arithmetic operations as modern computers. We did have gasoline powered cars that served precisely the same function. Electric cars are an improvement in energy efficiency, climate impact, and user experience, but really just an iterative improvement on existing vehicles.