Well yeah come back 100 years and maybe solar-electric cars will be getting started, ha ha. I mean maybe in this weather people will really be using electric cars. Right now they are for going to the beach in nice weather.
You look back 40 years, we really haven't came that far. There was cars getting mid 30's mpg and now today we got a few 40 mpg cars. We been stuck for awhile. No breakthroughs have happen lately. Its still a small engine/light car for best mpg.
I would LOVE to get free power from the sun. I'm not looking forward to gassing up my hot rod car this spring. Afraid I'm going to have to change the gearing to slow the engine down to save fuel. $20 was going too fast last fall and now gas cost even more, yuk.
I will say I think the oil companies--and governments--are all for us using oil for the time being.