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Unfortunately I can't claim to know much about the prohibition era or years before World War I. I don't even know the year Prohibition was enacted without looking it up. I can say with certainty it was the price of petroleum that won out. Prohibition and the prior movement certainly didn't help.
There does need to be a good study comparing using solar/wind to charge electric cars vs using ethanol grown from more efficient plants. Corn is at it's peak production per acre and while it can get better there's more room for other crops to be even better. Corn is thirsty and requires lots of nutrients. Soybeans for biodiesel isn't even reasonable because the production per acreage is 1/3 of Corn. Any other acceptable crops for biodiesel are grown from tropical plants. Some people are holding out for cellulosic but it's going to be expensive to keep using corn the production per acre will just be higher.
Growing a fuel makes as much sense as collecting it does. With collecting sun or wind you're limiting by materials, expenses, and land. There's no difference from building all that and growing it because you're looking at similar cost and expenses. Whereas if you stick with electrical generation there's the whole battery electric vehicle side that needs more development. There will still be some demand for liquid fuels even after petroleum production stops. Even if it's just racing or certain forms of transport.
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-Allch Chcar
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