[Haiku Guy]

Tyrants hate the automobile.

How can you control a population that can just hop in their vehicles and travel hundreds of miles at a time, on road or off? How can you tolerate fuel that can be stockpiled by individuals easily and lasts indefinitely?

But tyrants love electric cars. If you want to prevent mobility, all you have to do is throw a switch at Central Command, and all of those electric vehicles stop moving within a week. You can add controls so that every time an electric car is connected to the grid, it communicates its location and charge state to a central database, and perhaps a log of everywhere it has been and when.

Tyrants just love that sort of thing.

[NorthMountain]

But tyrants love electric cars. If you want to prevent mobility, all you have to do is throw a switch at Central Command, and all of those electric vehicles stop moving within a week. You can add controls so that every time an electric car is connected to the grid, it communicates its location and charge state to a central database, and perhaps a log of everywhere it has been and when.

While you're at it, mandate that the thing be "self driving". Can't have the peasants deciding they don't want to go where the oligarchy wants them to go. Can't have them deciding to go where the oligarchy DOESN'T want them to go, either.

[Sam Gamgee]

And outside of the US, electrical production is largely a state monopoly. So you go from a private decentralized complex system you have now for gasoline to a centralized, one producer that controls the input to your vehicle.

For example in British Columbia, BC Hydro is a Crown Corporation, that sets rates arbitrarily, and mostly generates that power from hydro damns. In Ontario it is a mix of nuclear, coal, and renewables, also state run.