– Why can’t we just ‘produce’ gasoline, like synthetically?
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In a *very* simplistic way vehicular ethanol is a sustainable (in the sense that we can just get more) but not exactly cleaner way of achieving combustion fuel. It’s arguably better than burning oil but even at that it’s kind of a stretch; the carbon captured in the plant of choice is immediately released into the atmosphere with the inefficiency of the system puting it in a net negative. With all that considered, it is still more expensive (financially and energetically) than pumping and distilling oil. Funny enough, in the past it was regarded as the future; nowadays some people even forget it exists as a power source.
The one thing that combustion has on any substitute is storability. It’s incredibly hard to save power for later and combustion engines are pretty efficient in using a stable, relatively simple to manipulate liquid to get a car moving. It wasn’t until very recent breakthroughs in battery technology that we could even consider an electric car as an alternative. Hopefully it will be the main choice soon enough
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