The biggest difference is Elite is a released and playable game, and Star Citizen is currently a series of tech demos and promises.

Even the most diehard Star Citizen supporters will readily admit that there is no game right now. Tech demo is the best way to describe it, as ssully already said.

They just had the better approach: Fully releasing a game with a minimal but high quality feature set that gets extended over time.

It is a great game for some people. If you want to try the first generations of VR, I think this game is the reference for that.

They didn't have the marketing of Star Citizen, but were better in everything else they did.

Could you send me a link to a video of anything like Elite: Dangerous gameplay from Star Citizen?

Out of MVP, they have none of those 3, it seems.