The principle of charity is to make the strongest possible version you can imagine of the opposing argument, and I also struggle with constructing yours. It appears to be “no electric car buyer with $140k to spend could ever rationally choose anything other than a Tesla”.
If that’s your position, as a Tesla owner who has invested an awful lot of effort across this post in battling Someones Wrong On The Internet, I’m going to say there’s emotion at play, yes.
If it’s merely “a Mercedes isn’t a slam dunk choice, Tesla still has something to offer”, well yes, that is true.
Regardless, and after reflecting on everything you said, I do now think Tesla is quite like Apple here. Just as with the first few years of the iPhone, they created the market and had it essentially to themselves. They offer a limited set of choices and highly opinionated take-it-or-leave design with fixed high prices.
Now the other manufacturers are arriving, just as the array of Androids did, with a variety of models, price points and customisability.
Now will follow years of mutual incomprehensibility and internet arguing over why one set of trade-offs are objectively better than another.