But Tesla's goal is exactly that: to make electric cars affordable and create the necessary infrastructure for them. And he does that by starting with the market segment where it's easiest to get started: high margin sports cars and luxury cars, and working his way down from there.
It'll be a while before his electric cars can really compete with cheap cars, but I'm sure he'll get there. He's making good progress.
I don't think he will. You can't work your way down from that, you have to design the product with the end market in mind. My bet is that electric cars simply are impossible to make at a $20k price point approaching anywhere near Tesla quality, in the same way you won't be able to make a decent electric bike for $300.
Probably the same way Ferrari is, no point to make wide acceptance of that brand.
Why wouldn't he be able to work down from that? It seems to be working quite well. The Model 3 costs $35k, which, while by no means cheap, is a lot more affordable than the Roadster and the S.
There's a lot of R&D going into this, and it's just easier to bootstrap a car company out of nothing while building expensive, high-margin luxury cars than when building competitive mass market cars. The mass market will come, but before it gets to that, costs have to go down more, and infrastructure for electric cars has to become ubiquitous.
It'll be a while before his electric cars can really compete with cheap cars, but I'm sure he'll get there. He's making good progress.