Good thread idea! The below are all from the inimitable
XXth C timeline. At this point, I honestly forget what stuff is Glen's, what's mine, and what's from the other dozens of contributors ... except I do know that I was the one able to get the Ethiopians up & manufacturing better cars than the Italians.

This world is all butterfly effect, but two of the themes of the TL are that (1) the easy petroleum deposits are discovered a bit later, and the difficult petroleum deposits are discovered earlier, and (2) electric-gasoline hybrid engines win the day very, very early on.
May 1910: Hannoversche Maschinenbau releases Europe's top-selling electric sedan and coupe, the Wolf and the Donner. They use their position to buy up the French company Castoldi, clearly modelling themselves after the French-German company dominating the gasoline market, Opel-Darracq.
May 5, 1911: Leland motors releases the Bolt, the first successful, mass-produced electric car not released by Ford in the USA.
April 1912 -- Sopwith-Rolls Engine Company is founded in Manchester, England. It quickly develops a reputation for craftsmanship in the auto, rail, and aviation industries.
1915 -- Ford releases the Cadillac Model 30GE (gasoline-electric), the company's first hybrid vehicle. Interestingly, it is considered primarily an electric vehicle with a gasoline engine to back up the electric motor, as evidenced by the small gas tank. The car is popular in urban areas and especially with delivery services.
December 1916 -- Wojciech Świętosławski publishes Liquid Chemistry, a general theory of how chemicals interact in all types of liquids. The work proves very practical to engineers in developing better wet cell batteries.
1917 The first diesel-electric locomotive enters service.
1917 Ford releases the Cadillac Metropolitan, their first automobile to be marketed as a hybrid vehicle.
May 1918 Quentin Roosevelt graduates from college with an engineering degree and begins his own aircraft and automobile design business.
January 1919 -- The trickle of blacks from the USA following Marcus Garvey to Ethiopia starts to flow much faster. Among the more recognizable names are ... Frederick M. Jones, an engineer who had been having poor luck at garnering attention for his inventions.
March 1919: The Adler Otto, an innovative gas-electric hybrid, helps Adler temporarily leap over Opel to claim the top spot in the German car market -- until Opel responds the next year with the Opeleszenz.
January 19, 1920: Willys Motors buys out Nash-LaFayette to become the 4th-largest car manufacturer in the USA.
May 7th 1920- Ford Motors Co. began assembling cars in Australia.
August 25th 1920- Oil discovered in Argelia by the Bureau of Petroleum Research. The area is near the Tunisian border in Hassi Messamoud but it's considered substantial enough to merit further exploration and exploitation.
March 10th 1922- Oil is discovered in Venezuela. General Juan Vicente Gómez begins to forge ties with United States and Europe,especially the British.
December 4, 1922: Frederick M. Jones perfects a mass-produced automatic transmission. Gesgeshi, Ethiopia's automobile company, is born.
June 15, 1923 - President Juan Gomez begins negotiations with Standard Oil and British Petroleum to develop and refine the recently discover oil fields of Lake Maracaibo.
April 5 1924 - Venezuela, Standard Oil, and British Petroleum come to a agreement. Oil extraction and transport will be the responsibility of Standard oil while the Refinement will be that of British Petroleum
September 1924: Seymour becomes involved in a legal dispute, working against Sinclair Oil, who had been embezelling money. It is a highly publicized case, and Seymour uses his influence and personal testimony to prove how deep the scandal ran. Sinclair is sentenced to 12 years in prison, and forced to sell his shares.
February 1925: Sinclair Oil is bought by Hearst Democrat Texan Rick Gatling.
1925 - Ford released the Model V, the first hybrid vehicle from the company's main division.
Decemver 1926: Rick Gatling puts Sinclair Oil into a trust with family members still in control. Though officially divested, he still has a major influence on the company and how it spends its money. He is one of the richest men in Congress.
March 10th, 1930-Enormous oil deposits are found in the Libyan desert. It is the beginning of the "Libyan Oil Rush": businesses rush to claim and extract the oil, and tens of thousands of unemployed people, mostly Algerian Arabs, come seeking well-paying jobs.
March 12 1930 President Gomez and John D. Rockefeller, Jr make plans to Bring Venezuelan oil under the sole control of Standard Oil.
March 15th 1932- British engineer and automaker Sidney Hortsman develops a new idea for of heavy suspension.The army asks him to see if he could incorporate to be used on their landships.The system uses coil-springs and has the advantages of a relatively long travel and, consisting of a self-contained boogie that is bolted to the hull, causing little or no encroachment on internal hull space. In addition, the entire suspension unit may be relatively easily removed and replaced if damaged.
February 1933: The American automobile market collapses, with Commonwealth, Markin, Maxwell, and Chrysler all going bankrupt. Studebaker swoops in and buys up all their assets, using the wide variety of factories to its advantage to become the first auto manufacturer to offer custom-building at prices that the average buyer could afford. The world-famous "Studebaker -- As You Wish" slogan emerges.
May 20, 1933: Germany and France each nationalize the portions of Hannoversche Maschinenbau-Castodi and Opel-Darracq that are within their borders and order the manufacturing plants to only produce military vehicles for the duration of the conflict. Humbled by the destruction of two of the largest companies in the European motor vehicle market, the rest of the industry scrambles to secure defense contracts and secure their independence.
July 16 1933- After the outbreak of war in Europe, Venezuela President Juan Gomez suddenly announces the nationalization of all petroleum and petroleum related industry "In the interest of the prosperity and sincerity of Venezuela." This brings the whole country's oil under the control of Standard Oil.
February 18th 1938- Repairs began to the oil facilities in Persia and Basra after the end of the Global War. By the end of 1941 all facilities in the area were at full capacity and under British or Turko-Arabic administration.
September 1938- First commercial oil discovery in Nigeria occurs at Olobiri in the Niger Delta. The discovery of oil in Nigeria brought the prospects of economic development for the colony to what it seemed a bright future.
November 1938 -- Britain's Sopwith-Rolls and Ethiopia's Gesgeshi, seeing opportunity in the utter chaos of Europe's post-war auto market, establish major ventures on the Continent.
1939 - American investments hit an all-time high in the Austrian Federated Empire and even the newly acquired territories. One of the most successful ventures is the investment of Standard Oil in the refurbishing of the Ploieşti oil complex damaged during the war.
June 1, 1939: The Gesgeshi Marathon, a fuel-efficient sedan, is now the best-selling car in Southern Persia. It is the first time that an Ethiopian company has risen to the top of a foreign market.
October 10, 1939: Leland Motors releases the Atlas, a full-size truck that uses a hybrid engine to acheive horsepower levels previously associated only with military vehicles -- not too surprising, since they had largely cornered the defense market as of late. Leland successfully parlays the good press into a new brand image as the "cowboy" car company, opening a giant new plant in Kansas City and releasing high-powered hybrids on its Willys and Nash lines.
May 1940: New oil fields are discovered in Bahrain and Qatar. Petrol prices plummet to 20-year lows, as the post-war auto market in Europe has been dominated almost entirely by fuel-efficient cars while Americans continue their love affair with half-electric hybrids. The more-expensive oil sands petrol fields in Canada and Venezuela begin losing money.
May 22 1940 With the oil prices plummeting, President Gomez orders the sale of Venezuela's oil to its ravaged neighbors in South America at a discount of the world price in an attempt to dominate the market in the area. He makes massive sales of oil to China at special rates. By the end of the year the size of the new markets pushed the Venezuelan economy back in the right direction. President Gomez uses the oil generated funds to begin a crash program to industrialize and strengthen his country as a whole.
Fall 1940 -- With the introduction of the 1941 model year, the two newcomers on the European auto market surge into prominence. Britain's Sopwith-Rolls, which until 1938 had contented itself with the British market, is now #1 in revenue in France, a position largely won because high-end manufacturing has been almost impossible in France. Gesgeshi, meanwhile, has won the #1 spot in Italy through an innovative sales technique -- by only selling their cars at dockside dealerships, they feed on the association of anything Italian with turmoil and failure. Businesses in other industries soon mimic Gegegshi, further warping the Italian economy.
July 4, 1950 -- The state legislatures of Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, Maryland, and New York sign the Sunshine Pact, setting a multi-state standard for the maximum allowable range of a wide array of industrial and automotive pollutants. The Dayton and Pittsburgh-based auto companies ended up supporting the pact when they realized that they could use new technology like "catalytic converters" to reduce emissions, giving them an advantage over the less-advanced automakers in Detroit and abroad.
February 17th 1951- Oil is discovered in the Cabinda enclave in Angola, being exploited mainly by settlers.
November 1952 --American Weekly magazine coins the phrase "The Big Green Belt" to refer to the mid-atlantic Sunshine Pact states, which in two years have already seen a noticeable drop in air pollution and a sudden emergence of "green" entrepreneurships that hope to make fortunes helping the railroad, automotive, steel, and mining businesses meet their new pollution targets.
October 1968 - Racing to undercut Gegeshi in the increasingly lucrative African and Russian markets, Britian's Sidney Hortsman and USA's Studebaker collaborate to produce the "clear diesel" fuel standard. Fuel stations are fewer and further between in these "developing markets", making the traditional 50-70 MPG hybrids not quite enough for rural customers, but electrical coverage is also poor, meaning that electrical cars are an impossible sell.
October 1970 - A market finally exists for super-lightweight, petrol-powered cars that can crack the 100 MPG (42 L/km) barrier. The SH Ock, SH Your, and Studebaker Minitruck, all using "clear diesel", soon dominate the streets in Russia and Africa.
EDIT: And here are the logos of the major auto companies -- with the corrected graphics, since the originals went missing:
Auto company logos:
Gesgeshi:
Leland:
Adler:
Studebaker: