I have no idea how much headway (or lack thereof) Nikola made into renewable energy, or how much of the man has been mythologized. One thing I do know is that if someone were to hypothetically make headway into such a thing, they would either be bought off, slandered, framed, or assassinated. The ruling class is not going to let the entire framework of the global hierarchy be shattered into a million pieces without a fight; they would probably prefer to blow up the world and kill 99.9% of people, while they hide in their bunkers and proclaim themselves the Kings of smoking rubble. I'm sure Elon knows this, which is why he focuses on shilling other fantastical pipe dreams.
Uhm, err, it's very easy, really: He innovated HV transmission and generation, so
Westinghouse Edward Dean Adams could centralize and thus monopolize electricity generation (pilot Project:
Niagra Falls), which, and that's were it gets libtarded, Eddison (the musk of his day) opposed, because he thought it was way more American and
muh freedom for many slumlords to operate and own cheap, small generators for each block or rowhouse - in reality the problem was metering and capitalizing, which doesn't matter if you ooperate a gaint ass hyrdoelectric plant and just charge people a few dimes per the vaguely metered kiliwatthour, even if the meter is wrong or peeps steal electricity, it's so cheap (in the case of hydro or nucular almost "free") that you look at it more like the state does at taxes anyway.
Eddison of course also hoped he could push more equipment and replacement parts and could also sell at least a chunk of the fuel supply to the suckers, whereas
Westinghouse was just concerned with actually providing and monopolizing cheap electricity 24/7 in a non third-world tier manner.
You may see relevancy in this little excursion, when you look at elon's pet projects around tesla (the company) and batteries... or general "green" incentives and handouts for small electricity plant oooperators (think those methane domes with 4 stroke thingamajings)...
These people are actual enemies of the civilized word our great, great grandparents build for us to live in. They want everything atomized and retarded again.
Because maximum slum lord emancipation goes over beeing able to turn on your stove every evening without even thinking about it.