So while it's likely Tesla will be heavily involved in the electric vehicle space, there's absolutely no way of knowing if some small tech company will come up with something better and immediately be bought out by Ford or GM who have the production capacity to crush Tesla.

That's actually a great point. The counterargument to this is a car is actually a pretty complex undertaking in and of itself, but to capture intangible demand - that thing about a product that drives long-term demand - well that is not so easy to capture. For iPhone devotees, they simply don't want a Samsung or HTC phone. Pepsi is often not Ok, Coke is it. Whole Food shoppers don't want to go to Aldi or Albertsons. People don't want just an electric car, they want a Tesla. You can argue against human desire, call people stupid, tell people what they want is wrong, but the heart want's what the heart wants.

People LOVE their Teslas, whether you like them or not. I always pay attention to that level of product devotion. If someone could just come up with an iPhone killer (and everyone has tried) by throwing money at it, they would. It's not that easy.

Also this notion, that Ford and GM, with their decades of combined mediocrity, is just gonna wake up one day and start making great cars, well, I don't know man. It would be very out of character.