woah get a load of the philosopher over here guys.
No--there was no movment on electrical vechicles before his interest. That alone should be enough to put his image on a coin.
Please do not attempt to rewrite history. The electric vehicle has a long and storied history, and the modern revival was well underway in the 90s and 00s. Tesla Roadster was the first (I think?) highway-legal EV.
The Roadster was the first highway-legal EV to use a lithium-ion battery. The GM EV1 used 16.5 kWh of lead-acid batteries.
The first electric vehicle was developed in 1832, 24 years before Nikola Tesla was born, 139 years before Elon Musk was born.