If the early oil and auto businesses were not characterized by big investment, that is probably in large part because there was still a lot of competition and oligopolistic consolidation had yet to take place.
An old Time Magazine article, written at the time when, "for the first time in history, coal was replaced by oil as the No. 1 source of U.S. energy," blames the lack of consolidation (in addition to usual suspects like the union demanding too high wages) for coal's decline: "Coal has another basic problem. The industry is mostly made up of companies too small to afford the sort of technological research that enables other industries to cut their costs. Last year, for example, the petroleum industry spent ten times as much for research as the coal industry" ("Crisis in Coal," 17 August 1953, <http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,858211,00.html>).
Moreover, we need to face up to the fact that the question of oil vs. environmentally sounder energy sources is not a technological question but a political one. There is a lot of oil out there, unexplored and untapped, if a political choice is made to make it available for exploitation by those who have capital and technology. Also, if a political choice is made to invest in environmentally sounder energy sources, technological innovations in that field will really take off.
If there continues to be no political force to compel conversion to an ecological system of production and consumption, there will be more investment in both oil and alternative energy sources whose environmental impacts may be as bad as or worse than oil, like ethanol, nuclear power, liquefied coal, etc. -- Yoshie <http://montages.blogspot.com/> <http://mrzine.org> <http://monthlyreview.org/>