[revelation]

Gasoline cars are reliant on the grid (of petrol stations), unless you can refine and pump oil yourself.

Eletric cars are only reliant on electricity. Availablity of eletricity from the grid is much better than gasoline from petrol stations, and even if power goes out you can charge your car from your solar panels or any other means you can find to generate electricity, of which there are plenty. Gyms could probably generate plenty of miles just from obese people on crosstrainers.

All in all, a move to electric cars and renewable power sources will decentralize energy supply and make us less reliant on the grid (and all the failed states that supply oil).

[notdonspaulding]

Indeed, I think it's neat to consider that the electric grid could eventually end up being more distributed than the petrol grid.

Petrol has to be drilled from wherever the fossils happened to be compressed, transported to wherever the closest port is, pipelined to wherever it's convenient to have a refinery, trucked to gas stations, pumped into your car. It's a very top-down hierarchy.

Electricity can be obtained from wherever the solar, wind, gas-powered-generator, nuclear-generator, geothermal sources are (hint: just about anywhere), put onto a fault-tolerant grid, and "pumped into cars" anywhere we've run copper.

Gas wins on storage capacity/convenience, but that's about it.