In the heydays, immediately after the IPO, when Netscape stock price was zooming up, Marc Andreesen boasted, "The desktop is irrelevant. OS is irrelevant. The Browser is the new king of the hill" (not an exact quote). Microsoft took the threat seriously, fought hard, fought dirty, and killed Netscape as a company. But it could not kill the idea. It won the battle with Netscape but lost the war with the browser.
Once someone with serious financial muscle, namely Google, took up the idea, it was game over for the desktop. Google docs has much smaller set of features compared to Microsoft Office. But it is enough to meet 100% of the needs of 90% of the population. It is also enough to meet 90% of the needs of the remaining 10%. Mere 10% of the user base using these bells and whistles for just 10% of the time. ChromeOS is based on a Linux kernel. Android pads and phones are based on Linux. Linux has taken over the server market. It has been the decade of Linux.
In a meta sense, the old PC desktop market was based on selling everyone the superset of needs of all the users. Grandma wanting a machine to look at pics of grandkids was buying a machine capable of developing C++ projects or doing video editing. Once Apple broke the market into two pieces, content creators and content consumers it was a true paradigm shift. But even grandma needs to type a letter once in a while. The browser is enough to meet that need,
Similar shift will happen in automobiles. Everyone is buying a machine that can refuel/recharge in 10 minutes to go another 250 miles. Even the second and the third car of the family is bought with the same mind set. But it can change very quickly. Solar is picking up. It is cost effective for people to ditch the grid. Utilities are looking for a way to keep them in the grid. Grabbing a piece of the transportation energy market would be very attractive to them. When Big Oil gets a real well financed competitor well versed in dirty local politics, the electric utilities, that is when electric cars will take off.
There are many technologies maturing. Basic range of 100 miles is well within reach. Range extending options based on rentable charged batteries, battery swaps, towable range extending battery packs, range extending IC engines are all possible. The challenge is not the technology, but the investment needed for infrastructure.