Surely these big bad oil companies are only producing a product that everyone craves, its not like oil companies are making countries buy their products. Companies respond to public demand, so the public have to drive this because governments and big business like status quo
Originally, the electric vehicle was more successful than the petrol derivative. Mainly due to the fact that they were quieter, smoother, more powerful, cleaner, and required far less maintenance. Their only problem was the power density of the battery and the recharge time. Petrol has a huge power density in comparison, and can 'recharge' the vehicle in a fraction of the time. But it is dirty and polluting. And if the electric vehicle was charged overnight or at every opportunity that it was stopped at home [private cars sit around for 90% of their operating life] then there was barely ever a situation where it was a problem.
But oil companies realised that they could produce a fuel in quantity for these 4 cycle engines. However, they were noisy, dirty and required continued maintenance. And the infrastructure and power to produce the fuel was enormous too, and was terrible for the environment. But the infrastructure for electric vehicle charging was limited too, and there was potentially huge money to be made from 'black gold'. So, even though fuel had to be bought in containers, petrol vehicles gained a foothold. Pretty soon it occurred to the new car and oil companies that if they bought up or squeezed out these electric vehicles they would have the business to themselves, despite the fact that electric vehicles sold rather well in cities. And that's what happened. They bought up electric transport companies and closed them down. And they gave gifts to politicians to shower subsidy upon them. To this day, the oil industry is the most heavily subsidised at 6.7% of Global Domestic Product. For that subsidy governments have increasingly asked, then demanded, for better, safer vehicles, as the mounting evidence grew. Both the car and oil companies have cajoled, lobbied, kicked, screamed, injured and killed people while opposing improvement standards in their vehicles. Which results in situations like Dieselgate where they actually end up openly cheating, and in getting presidents like Trump to overturn Obama's fairly easy rate of rising standards in emissions from fossil fuel vehicles to something they can manage cheaply. Makes you wonder what we could do with that subsidy seeing as they are getting something for nothing? Build a sustainable future by pointing in the direction of renewables perhaps? In the public's perception, the clean energy brigade get a huge subsidy, whereas the truth is that they get a tiny fraction of what oil companies receive, and there has been talk in the recent past of cutting even that down.
So, in fact, the public wants what the public are told what they want, and society is geared around the FFV, so what else are they to do? That's why it is rather hard to break that oil company stranglehold. But electric vehicles are finally going to do it simply because their impressive efficiency just overwhelms everything in the end. They themselves are cleaner, quieter, more powerful, faster and non-polluting. And renewable power/battery storage is going to succeed because it is cheaper than traditional energy production. Plus, when you feed their power to an EV the result is practically zero pollution. In that kind of world, oil companies can't exist. And many iof them aren't trying either. They're diversifying like mad and selling out. For example, Shell has bought the largest EV recharging network in Europe, and BP has the largest one in the UK. In the end, we'll adopt EVs and New Eco power generation worldwide, not because we've suddenly gone all conservationist, but because it is simply cheaper to do so.
