To be clear I am not entirely opposed to electric, I just am opposed to our current power infrastructure. If we would invest in it and meke it reliable and secure, and if we can make power environmental, and not able to be taken out by any 5 guys with AK47s, then yes, electric has a future. I dont however think that the combustion engine will just die, I believe we will see the innovation within it that we SHOULD have seen 40 years ago and nobody cared. Gasoline engines at 2.0 liters should be getting 200 mpg, not 35, we have let tech pass us by and its appalling.
We need to concentrate on India and China being more environmentally friendly if we EVER want to clean up this planet, because they are the number one problem and they arent even thinking about doing anything about it right now.
But your point about Musk is essentially how I feel about him as well.
If they can make the cars environmentally friendly to produce then that would help too, since manufacturing is the major polluter in the world, not cars. And currently it takes up to 3x the ammount of energy to build a hybrid or electric car than a regular old gas one. Fix that and they will be miles ahead too.
I was substantially more interested in fuel cell/internal hydrogen/oxygen combustion, since those things are naturally occuring chemicals and can essentially run in a internal combustion engine with enough compression, they also put oput water, would not be dificult to work on or involve 10,000 volt electric shock, and all mechanics today could be easily retrained to work on hydrogen combustion motors, since they would work off the same principals, except put out water as emissions.
Theres other options that dont require mass ammounts of highly polutive materials like copper, solar panels, magnets, plastic, ect, ect.