Tesla had two advantages. Let’s ignore the original Roadster here, nobody bought one anyway and it was not a ground-up design by them.

First off, they started with a “luxury” EV. Luxury cars have high margins and you can more easily fit the price of the big battery in there - and since the S was a pretty big car, you have space for a big battery. The other two mainstream EVs at the time were the tiny Nissan Leaf and the even tinier Mitsubishi I-Miev - you couldn’t fit a big battery in a car that tiny, nor can you charge enough of a price to pay for a big battery.

Note here I said “luxury” because if you compare the Tesla model S to the similarly priced Mercedes-Benz S-Class or BMW 7 series… Yeah no, the quality isn’t anywhere near good enough. But it was still in the same market segment and competed by being completely unique at the time, instead of competing through luxury.

Secondly, they had no ICE heritage. No existing cars to start with. It’s a huge advantage because they could design the platform right away to have a large flat battery pack at the bottom, etc. Meanwhile, Mercedes started selling its’ first serious EV attempt in 2019 and that still had a transmission tunnel because it was based on the GLC SUV (which itself was just a C-Class on stilts lol). It didn’t have a drive shaft, so no need for a tunnel for it. Just a waste of space. The first dedicated EV platform came out in 2021 with the EQS sedan. BMW made the i3 in 2013, but it was tiny, ugly and needed to burn gasoline to extend range. Bleh. First proper EV? The i7, came out in 2022, STILL shares its platform with the ICEs. Audi? First proper EV was the OG E-Tron SUV (now called the Q8 E-Tron, unrelated to the actual Q8) in 2019, shares platform with ICEs, but it was among the first earliest EVs to have a proper heat pump system to keep you warm without draining the battery straight to zero in the winter. Range? Bad. Overall quality? Meh. Performance was decent and it at least feels like a proper car though. Suspension was superb. Felt like a small light car driving it. For a 2.5 ton SUV that’s a compliment. But worst of all? It’s being discontinued, and the downmarket EVs (Q4 E-tron) from Audi are way worse. So of the big 3 Germans, Mercedes is the ONLY one to use a dedicated EV architecture for some of its vehicles.

Look, I’m a huge fan of German cars. Love-hate relationship with Audi, love relationship with BMW and Mercedes. Starting with the Passat B6, I pretend Volkswagen doesn’t exist. But they fumbled it all HARD and they would’ve had the absolute best chance to be Tesla killers. They know how to make big expensive luxury cars. Could’ve launched proper luxury EVs a decade ago and Tesla would be a regional automaker for the US. But they didn’t. Because of their arrogance and complacency. Fucking Jaguar of all companies even beat them to it.