It depends what market segment you're looking at. If it's the 'Electric Car' market, Telsa are pretty much the leaders in this segment apart from a handful of super-micro city cars.
If you mean the 'Performance Car' market, apart from one or two niche offerings and prototypes, the usual manufacturers should be spooked by Tesla's potential to realise and implement new technology.
Musk makes no secret of his positioning in the market and going for the price point that they have. But there are hundreds of different cars at the same price point of the Model S, none of which are even in the same ball park.
The necessity for the incumbents to appeal to the mass-market is exactly why they should be worried, they're business relies on so many manufacturing synergies to reduce price, adapting all of those chassis and systems to cope with electric drive and self driving is going to be a challenge if they're to sell to their exist mass-market customers, at a price they expect. Tesla doesn't have that problem.
Tesla leads the electric car market in technology, but not in volume; there are many more LEAFs on the road today than there are Teslas. Total sales for the LEAF are about 65,000.
Tesla is delivering 550 cars per week[1], which is about 2357 per month. In August Nissan sold 2420 Leafs[2]. So seems like sales are just about equivalent. Except that Tesla is supply constrained and sells direct to consumers, so that 2357 underestimates actual sales. And many of those Leafs are sitting in dealerships, while none of the Teslas are.
Now Telsa only sold 5k cars in 2012, so it's doubtful they have on the road more than half of the 75,000 Leafs that have been sold[3]. But the Leaf started shipping in December 2010[4] whereas the Model S started shipping in June 2012[5] so it's not exactly a fair comparison.
The Chevy Volt actually did better than either in August, with 3351 sales[2]. Although their year-to-date sales were the same as the Leaf (14k) which suggests they had some late resurgence.
You're comparing US LEAF sales with worldwide Tesla sales. Worldwide LEAF sales are around 4,500 a month. In the US, at least, LEAFs are in high demand. In Atlanta dealers have only 120 hours of supply. Before the Model S, Tesla sold the Roadster, but the numbers were so low they don't affect the comparison.
At this point one can only talk about installed base as both Nissan and Tesla cannot meet demand. Nissan makes its own batteries but cannot make them fast enough. And of course the markets are fairly different. The LEAF is much, much cheaper, and is in no way a luxury or performance car.
Musk makes no secret of his positioning in the market and going for the price point that they have. But there are hundreds of different cars at the same price point of the Model S, none of which are even in the same ball park.
The necessity for the incumbents to appeal to the mass-market is exactly why they should be worried, they're business relies on so many manufacturing synergies to reduce price, adapting all of those chassis and systems to cope with electric drive and self driving is going to be a challenge if they're to sell to their exist mass-market customers, at a price they expect. Tesla doesn't have that problem.