The "reasons" had nothing to do with simplicity of building one yourself, however: neither of the two biggest trends were "simple", from the industrialization o

The "reasons" had nothing to do with simplicity of building one yourself, however: neither of the two biggest trends were "simple", from the industrialization of a complex process into an assembly line (notably Ford, but then competitors) to the logistics of setting up a fuel supply chain versus battery chemistry efforts of the time. (Most diaries and reports at the time seemed to imply that the DIY car people of the early 1900s much preferred the simplicity of the electric car and had some miracle happened at the time in battery chemistry the world would have shifted a much different direction.)