The last couple of weeks may be looked back on as a watershed in the development of electric vehicles—a moment when major automakers worldwide put more skin in the game and, just as importantly, consumers signaled they were ready for the electric revolution.

Let’s take a look at consumers first. They have turned the all-electric Nissan Leaf into the iPad of the automotive world. The first Leaf has yet to roll off the production lines and already the car is sold out in both the United States and Japan, its first markets.

Granted, the 13,000 orders in the U.S. and 6,000 orders in Japan are miniscule for an industry that measures unit sales in the seven figures. But it’s certainly an indication that if you build electric cars, consumers will come.

And Carlos Ghosn, the head of Nissan, plans to make a huge bet on electric cars in the future. Ghosn says his company and its European partner, Renault, will have the capacity to make 500,000 electric cars by 2014. That means a $1.7 billion investment in the company’s lithium ion battery plant in Smyrna, Tennessee, and a total investment of $5 billion from 2007 to 2012 in Nissan’s bid to dominate the electric-car market.

But Nissan is far from the only player announcing investments in the electric-vehicle market in the past couple of weeks. At least some of those investments could turn small players into big ones—and local players into global ones.

Take Tesla Motors. The venture-backed Silicon Valley firm has turned out one of the most exciting automobiles of the past few years—the Tesla Roadster. This all-electric beauty is speedy, trendy, and expensive. When it launched with a six-figure price in 2008, the waiting list of buyers included California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea.

But the roadster is essentially handmade and very much a boutique product for the wealthy, not an electric vehicle for the masses.

And the company itself isn’t exactly turning a profit yet. CEO Elon Musk, in court papers filed in February in a divorce settlement, pleaded poverty. He said he was getting by on loans from friends. “About four months ago, I ran out of cash,” he wrote.

It’s very much the classic entrepreneurial story of betting everything on an idea.

But Tesla Motors’ and Musk’s ambition goes beyond the boutique. The company wants to start making electric sedans—at first, high-priced ones; but later, cars for the masses.

Enter Toyota and the U.S. government.

The government, betting on electric cars, has floated Tesla a $465 million loan.

The world’s largest automaker plans to team with Tesla over the next couple years to start building electric cars at the closed NUMMI auto plant in Fremont, California. And those electric cars will likely be for the masses, given Toyota’s history as the company that builds the most popular hybrid in the world, the Prius.

Tesla will buy the New United Motor Manufacturing Inc. (NUMMI) plant for $42 million. And Toyota will invest $50 million in the company if a $100 million initial public offering by the Silicon Valley automaker goes off as planned later this year.

And there will be a mixing of cultures in the form of the man Tesla has hired to run its production, the San Francisco Business Times reports.

Gilbert Passin is the point where Tesla, Toyota, and NUMMI meet.

Now Tesla’s vice president of manufacturing—hired four months ago from NUMMI, where he was a Toyota general manager—Passin will be in charge of melding elements of the three companies together as Tesla and Toyota enter a partnership to produce electric cars at the old NUMMI plant in Fremont.

Passin will use principles of the Toyota production system and will hire the best and brightest from NUMMI and beyond, but the culture will be Tesla’s own.

“The Toyota partnership gives us a lot of opportunity for growth and a lot of ideas to explore and do together if it makes sense,” Passin said. “But the fundamental culture will be a Tesla culture, and we’re going to do our very best to make it world class.”

And it will have to be world class, because the competitors in this game aren’t going to be the store up the street, but manufacturers with worldwide scope, some of which are household names and others you may not have heard of—yet.

General Motors is launching its much-anticipated hybrid electric, Volt, later this year in select markets. The Volt isn’t a pure electric play. But it’s pretty close. It will run off of an electric motor, but have a small gasoline engine used to recharge its batteries, getting around the current lack of infrastructure for charging electric vehicles.

Another worldwide player is spreading its bets around as well. Daimler AG, the world’s second-largest luxury automaker, this week set up an $88 million joint venture with BYD, a Chinese automaker backed by another famous name, Warren Buffett, to manufacture electric cars. Daimler has already invested in Tesla, as well.

The Daimler play is meant to compete with BMW for market share in the growing Chinese market. BMW has already partnered with Brilliance China Automotive Holdings to make battery-powered models there. But could there be a day when BYD becomes a name for electric luxury here in the U.S. as well? Don’t bet against it.

Consulting firm IHS Global Insight expects 3 percent of the 90 million cars sold worldwide to be electric by 2020.

But there are those, like Vantage Point Venture Capital CEO Alan Salzman, an early backer of Tesla, who thinks that assessment isn’t as optimistic as it could be. He expects a “tipping point” in electric auto adoption in the next 10 to 15 years. “And then it will go very fast,” he said.

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Kent Bernhard Jr. is News Editor of Portfolio.com