I don't know if I can actually believe that. EVs were already coming. Yeah the rollout was a bit slower than the demand for them in established companies, but not by much. People had already been driving hybrid vehicles for quite awhile, and some electric cars already existed even if most were lower mileage/smaller battery models.
To me it is like claiming without iphones we wouldn't have gotten smartphones or touchscreens until a decade later. Except PDAs and touch screens already existed, apple just got a few years jump start on a big brand model before many other companies did the math on how cheap mobile computing and touch screens were becoming.
I'm not convinced it's a good comparison. Even in the dumbphone days we had the Blackberry and NGage and JavaME and other attempts to be the next big thing. It just took a few years and certainly wasn't because of Apple.
With automakers it seemed like in the 20-teens they all shrugged and said, "looks like hybrids are the best we can do". Then Tesla started selling sedans and SUVs and exactly one legacy auto design cycle later we got the electric Mustang, Golf, 3-series, etc. I think they would have milked ICE as long as they could had no one come along with a successful ev.
To me it is like claiming without iphones we wouldn't have gotten smartphones or touchscreens until a decade later. Except PDAs and touch screens already existed, apple just got a few years jump start on a big brand model before many other companies did the math on how cheap mobile computing and touch screens were becoming.