OK, getting back to
a) headlong rush to EV and autonomous by Car execs, with scant regard to profitability
b)govt regulation going increasingly hard against ICE - for example is Macron's diesel tax/diesel prohibitions attempted in France that sparked the Yellow Vest protests. This was about a 20% increase in price, and the banning of diesels in urban town and city areas. A bit of a shock for everyday people.
Maybe the govcos can see something we cannot see: a real 'peak oil' of sorts. Let me explain.
For some time there's been a few economic bloggers posting about EROEI - energy returned on energy invested. Basically, there's still large oil reserves worldwide, but it's taking more and more effort to distill a good product out of it. Initial EROEI in the new Texas fields was about 100, Saudi might have been similar, now it's just south of 10 to 1. Below 5, and complex industrial society starts to get... less complex.
So if you are govco and can see this coming, maybe legislate in a new form of transportation and hopefully no one will notice.
Exhibit 1: the French diesel tax/ban. Blogger SRSRocco points out the relationship between heavy fuel oil (think: ships) and diesel. He notes that the production of heavy fuel oil has been lessening, and some of the raw product diverted to making diesel. The lessening production of heavy fuel oil is argued to portend a peak in diesel production, then spreading to petrol - from heavier carbon fuels to lighter ones.
https://srsroccoreport.com/has-peak-...snt-look-good/
Exhibit 2: Gail Tverberg argues that this transition away to electric is not really gonna happen. She makes a good point that increasing energy use generally means a happier nation, and provides examples of the political/warfare strife when 'energy use per capita' falls more than about 20%. De-industrialisation in Western nations has seen this occur, and depletion of fields in oil exporting countries has done similar. The results are political strife or worse, and I'd never viewed recent happenings such as Yellow Vests, Brexit, Venezuela's chaos, or Yemen through this prism.
She notes that much of this has been masked, and says "The timing of when fossil fuels will leave us seems to depend on when central banks lose their ability to stimulate the economy through lower interest rates." This follows on from the idea that QE -> high commodities prices ->profitability for oil exploration. If QE stops, oil price falls, explorers stop as it's not profitable -> no oil for you!
https://ourfiniteworld.com/2019/04/0...-fossil-fuels/
Exhibit 3: To counter Tverberg, here's Tony Seba's view that it is
inevitable that renewables will overtake fossil fuels, that autonomous driving and BEVs will destroy both the oil industry and the car industry, and that technological society will be better than ever:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2b3ttqYDwF0
So summing up, companies like Tesla might be our last chance to continue to have the world of choice-of-transport, high technology in the face of reserves of fossil fuels that are harder to find and make into an easily usable product.
My own take is that planning for local generation of fuels that can run in current technology (say E85 with a chip) is probably a pretty smart idea going forward. Or solar/battery/electric car at home. I do wonder if the wonderful complexity of things you can buy from all over the world, travel you can do, etc, will ever be as good as today.