Latest EV push - get them on 'subscription' and replace every 3 to 5 years like a mobile phone on a contract plan

@ArishMell There are areas in the US that have electrified rails, primarily those that operate in tunnels. Outside of those, most are diesel.

The US once had a huge automotive industry. They became arrogant though and the foreign markets took over much of it. Now they are concentrating on trucks and SUVS, eliminated sedans almost entirely. They opted to allow the EV industry to be dominated by Musk and his Teslas and overseas manufacturers, and now complain the Chinese have take over too much of that.

@samueltyler2 The way the railways in Britain were electrified was rather patchy.

The London Underground was probably first, simply because operating steam locomotives in tunnels is not exactly easy or pleasant!

Electrification of the sprawling tangle of conventional overground lines around London and South-East of England, started in the 1890s I think, eventually extending as far South-West as Bournemouth, about 100 miles away. They used third-rail electrification.

One unusual example was that after steam traction ended in 1968 the remaining 30 miles from Bournemouth to Weymouth used "electro-diesel" locomotives. These ran on electric motors to the end of the third rail then switched to a Diesel engine. Eventually that last 30 miles was electrified too and the service became operated throughout by electric multiple unit trains (no separate locomotive).

Elsewhere used various, self-contained Diesel and Diesel-electric locos.

The railways were nationalised in 1948, and in the 1960s British Railways as it was called, started a major modernisation programme. Electrification using overhead wires started from London North and NW-wards, but this has not happened Westwards to the cities there and in South Wales. The "Eurostar" services between London, Brussels and Paris via the Channel Tunnel, are fully electric.

So there are still big areas without volts, and a large, complicated and very busy region not compatible with the others that do!

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The fate of the British car industry was a mixture of low investment, complacency, a reputation not always deserved for poor design and workmanship (the bad ones spoil everyone's reputation), and cripplingly bad industrial relations especially in the 1960s. The trouble there was on both sides. Many firms that had not gone out of business or swallowed by the larger were taken over by foreign ones, mainly American and French.

Ford established a British factory way back (1920s?) and kept its identity.

Eventually the Japanese manufacturers did something others did not do: they learnt from their early design and quality mistakes, and even built factories in Britain.

Who owns whom now though is an international tangle, leading to a lot of transporting parts one way, sub-assemblies another, from country to country until arriving at the vehicle assembly plant itself.

I listened to a programme on the radio a while back, in which former union representatives and managers recalled their experiences in the 1960s. They admitted their own parts in it all, but also commented that one of the first things the Japanese did when taking over an existing factory was refurbish and modernise it thoroughly, turning it from filthy and neglected into one far cleaner and pleasant to work in. They also introduced much better QA practices.

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I have an engineers' text-book published some time around 1910 - 1920. It doesn't have a date in so I worked it out by some detective work!

This describes in detail electric railway systems, and has a sizeable chapter on battery-electric cars and small commercial vehicles being developed in Britain, France and the USA in the 1900s. These cars were permitted on the roads through London's Royal Parks, which excluded the new-fangled petrol ones on fumes and noise grounds!

@ArishMell thanks.

@Majorsite I keep raising this point with the net-zero zealots and they cannot handle it or answer it. Currently Australia has 2.5 ish percent of registered vehicles that are EV's, To reach even 50 percent, the total capacity of the Australian electricity grid has to increase by 20+x the current capacity to support charging all the EV's that Australian's are supposed to be forced into buying between now and the mid-2030's (that's only 10 years away). Most people cannot afford rooftop solar and/or home battery systems, and most people would not be willing to allow their EV to become a 'grid battery' and have energy 'stolen' from their EV in the same way you wouldn't allow a random person to take petrol or diesel that you paid for from your petrol or diesel car.