Well, that didn't take long.  The reason the electric car has been dead since the early 1900s*, when it was actually kind of popular, is because batteries suck.  They suck a bit less now, although they're still not really suitable for long trips.  No conspiracy needed, and it's not as if you couldn't get an electric car in the intervening century if you really wanted one.  They weren't built at scale because virtually nobody wanted a car that needed to charge for eight hours for every sixty miles traveled.<br><br>They were popular because they hadn't invented starter motors yet, and manually turning over an engine to start it was horrible, especially since the rod you were cranking was, naturally, attached to the engine's crankshaft and once the engine finally started it didn't always disengage properly and could break your arm.