Governments and automakers are charting the transition from gasoline- and diesel-powered vehicles to electric ones, though it will be decades before all fuel pumps go the way of the dinosaur.
The internal combustion engine changed the world as few other inventions have. The development, along with the advent of assembly line production for automobiles, offered an easy and individualized way to travel long distances and soon transformed global geopolitics. As the demand for oil to fuel automobiles increased, countries that were once an afterthought on the global stage — such as Azerbaijan, Iran, Venezuela, Indonesia and Saudi Arabia — became essential links in the international supply chain. Fossil fuels, and their producers, quickly attained singular importance in the global order. Over the past several decades, however, numerous technologies have emerged that could rival and eventually replace the internal combustion engine and, with it, oil.
