Self driving cars were coming anyway. Musk capitalized early on the market and hey, that's what makes our world go round. He also has done a little more than put batteries into cars. He has shifted an entire industry around electric cars towards a standard that is elevating the future of it. For better or worse, whether you like him or not, he's put electric cars on the map and driven the technology forward.
As for the brain chips, that's also been coming for a long time. Again, he's capitalized on it. Brain chip technology is nothing new. Its been an ambition for science for a very long time. We are going in that direction with the augmentation of ourselves with our digital world. Inevitably we will end up at a point where we become part of the digital world to degree that we actually are assimilated completely into it.