[brokenmasonjars]

Notice I wrote "could have led Ford and others to research ways to make the electric model more capable for the masses as consumer demand would seek such alternatives."

I think if oil was of a higher price due to lack of competition there would have been more incentives by car companies to try to figure a way to make the costs of running a car go down to appeal to the emerging middle class. There would have been more money in R&D at those earlier times trying to solve problems that were not really considered or kept to the side because they were too difficult. I believe for the most part discoveries could be made even then that would build up to suitable electric cars. Of course we wouldn't have had them by 1911.. as one would need to take into consideration the break up of Standard Oil. It would have been interesting to see what the military would have came up with during WWI/WWII if oil was too costly and battles needed to be won with the usage of vehicles and how that would translate over to private business and civilian life.

[autokad]

we have a hundred years of additional research, and tesla alone is putting billions in research and batteries still aren't there. I think you need to picture what life was back at that time, and remember the price of gas wasnt the price point that prevented car ownership. Ford was type-A about getting prices down in all possible ways, but if for some reason standard oil ridiculously increased the price of gas and nobody was able to stop them (I dont buy into the argument standard oil keeping its monopoly would have increased the price of oil so much that an alternative would have been needed), they would have used coal.