To suggest that electric cars are having a painful birth would be a colossal understatement. Tesla clearly plowed this field and quickly recognized that the lack of a charging infrastructure was going to be a problem and, with reasonable effectiveness, dealt with it tactically. However, those "tactical" chickens are about to come home to roost and it probably won't be pretty.
Jaguar, the first company to offer a true alternative to the Tesla, did some things very right and some very, very wrong. Rather than developing a Tesla killer, it instead created an impressive SUV that could have been far better.
I bought the Jaguar I-Pace, one of a tiny handful in customers' hands right now, and I think the perfect electric car would be a blend of the Model 3 and the I-Pace (pictured above). I'll explain why and then close with my product of the week: a high-tech hearing aid I saw at CES that might give you one of Superman's powers.

Tesla's Brilliance and Nasty Mistakes

While Tesla isn't known for being the smartest car maker, having made a ton of manufacturing mistakes over the years, it is by far the most experienced company with electric cars. Its brilliant decisions include coming in at the top rather than the bottom of the market, as Fiat did. Fiat loses a ton of money on every electric car it sells. While Tesla did lose money, its losses were tied to explosive growth and not the profitability of the Model S.
Tesla built a charging infrastructure reasonably, though far from completely, dealing with one of the two electric car problems. It has the closest thing to gas station equivalence for chargers right now, particularly when it comes to high-speed chargers, which Tesla calls "Superchargers." Finally, it focused on making the cars really safe, and actually broke some of Consumer Reports testing equipment because its cars were so robust.
However, Tesla made some really nasty mistakes as well. It didn't use experienced manufacturing teams, either to build the plant or manage it, resulting in avoidable losses and huge delays.
The most popular vehicles in the U.S. were SUVs and pickups. Tesla was slow to develop SUVs, and the one it brought to market, the Model X, was a reliability and complexity nightmare (it also was pretty unattractive).
Ironically, pickup trucks likely would be ideal electric cars, because people generally don't drive them long distances. As a work vehicle, the battery could have done double duty as a power source for tools. It is therefore interesting to note that the first electric pickup won't come from Tesla or Ford, but from another new company that Tesla or Ford likely should just buy.
The problem with the Tesla charging stations is that they don't comply with the Asian or European/U.S. standards for plugs or core technology.
Given the required electronic integration with direct high-speed chargers and the car, there is some doubt whether adapters for the European/U.S. fast-charging stations will work at full power, if at all, with a Tesla.
More importantly, unlike gas stations, which can be incredibly profitable, Tesla's charging stations are largely cost centers that mostly just work with Teslas. Gas stations that could fuel only Fords wouldn't make a ton of economic sense for the long term. Public chargers that work only with Teslas won't be economically effective in the long term either.
The Model 3 likely should have been a small SUV rather than a sedan, to get access to a larger potential market. Quality appears to be relatively poor for that car, with owners reporting missing parts, lots of paint damage, surprise shutdowns, and incomplete assembly issues.