Against all odds Tesla is still in business - here's why • The auto industry has a history of quickly eliminating competitive threats. • Tesla still isn't perceived as a threat, although it's widely admired. • Automakers remain happy to let Tesla take on all the electric-car risk. Elon Musk is so charismatic and Tesla is so cool that it's easy to overlook how unlikely the automaker's success is. After a brush with bankruptcy in 2008, the company has thrived , minting a $60-billion market capitalization (surpassing all three of the Detroit Big Three at one juncture) and becoming the carmaker that everyone is obsessed with. How did this happen? There hasn't been a significant new American car company in decades. True, over the course of the 20th century, dozens of automakers rose and fell, started up and were swallowed whole. But since the 1980s, the US has been home to the Big Three and that's it. The rest of the US market is served by Japanese, German...