Walter Russell Mead imagines:
[T]here’s a huge worldwide investment in oil production, distribution and refining. As the electric cars storm onto the market and both short and long term demand for oil look set to decline, panic will seize the world’s oil companies. Ruthless cost cutting and price slashing will begin. OPEC may collapse. Gas could end up being cheaper than Koolaid (at the moment it’s cheaper than Diet Coke), and the big beneficiaries of the introduction of the electric car might well turn out to be the owners (and makers) of gas guzzling SUVs. In any case, the transformation of the world oil market from a seller’s market to a buyer’s paradise is going to reduce America’s security problems connected with the oil supply whether we get in the electric car game first or not.