What people will never be able to acknowledge, never face up to, is that however successful Tesla Motors may become, it will never be 1/100th as successful as its namesake, Nikola Tesla. The same cannot be said for the Ford Motor Company, which long since surpassed noted anti-Semite Henry Ford, even ignoring the fact that it was the only major American car maker to survive without bankruptcy protection.
@2- Nikola Tesla died a poverty-stricken recluse, in large part because he couldn't secure funding for his research. So your comparison works on a level that perhaps you didn't intend.
I look forward to the day when the price drops on Teslas because they've been on the road long enough to no longer look fashionable, so that I can afford to purchase one.