Isn't it Japanese tradition to not really be the first at anything tho? I mean, if we look at history, they were also very late when it came to fossil fuel cars too (vs American / European manufacturers at the time). They tend to be slow at adopting new tech but very good at analyzing, copying and then building something better. So it isn't really any surprise to me that Tesla and BYD are first. But we'll see I guess.
Not really a fan of Tesla's (or Elon Musk for the matter), they tend to have high insurance premiums and were over my budget. BYD is also not very widely available (unsure if related to all these China related sanctions) where I'm at. So I ended up getting a used Nissan Leaf 2019 model recently. Yeah, the range isn't amazing but it was cheap with low mileage and I mostly drive within the city 95% of the time.