Electric cars and the coming revolution

Just as it happened in the digital arena, electric and driverless cars are going to be disruptive for companies that resist change

The world’s 10 largest companies by revenue include six that produce fossil fuel — Royal Dutch Shell, British Petroleum, Sinopec, China National Petroleum, Saudi Aramco and ExxonMobil. Another two are companies that use fossil fuel (Volkswagen and Toyota). Over the next few years, these eight companies will not remain in the top 10.

Many nations have begun setting cut-off deadlines for manufacturing fossil fuel automobiles, and some have begun implementing them. China, the world’s largest consumer of fossil fuels and of automobiles, has gone down that path aggressively as have most nations in Europe with the possible exception of Germany,