Why we have the cars we have

Though my initial interest in electric cars centered around the question of their feasibility--in other words, how soon would it be practical for me to get one?--my reading has taken me in a different direction.  I'm now more interested in the early history of the electric car (1890-1920s), when the electric car was first developed and then eclipsed by the gasoline-powered car.

 This reading has brought me to the question, "What drove (pardon the pun) the history of the electric car, from rise to sudden death?"  A recent documentary, "Who Killed the Electric Car?" focuses on a similar question in regards to the fate of the electric cars that were in the development phase in the 1990s.  That film develops a conspiracy theory, pinning the blame on the powers that reside in the large oil companies.

One might ask, "Was it the same in the 1920s?"

But this isn't really the primary question--a question of fact--that most interests me.

I'm more interested in thinking about the larger question that is really at the crux of the debate over the electric car's demise (and recent reemergence): "What drives the history of technology?"  Or, to be more precise and specific, how much power does technology itself have in shaping its own history?"
It's not unusual for historians (professional and otherwise) to assert that technology drives history.  Most recently, for example, we've been introduced to the idea that Twitter, Facebook, and other forms of social media, now made readily-available via hand-held cell phones, have made possible the "Arab Spring," a series of revolutions and uprisings in Northern Africa and elsewhere.  Others have argued that the home computer is responsible for wide-spread changes in the world economy.  Earlier generations wrote about how the rise of the automobile changed the geography of America and American business and living arrangements.  This is "technological determinism," a theory of history that argues that technology drives (or even determines) history according to a logic all its own. If a technologically-superior widget comes into production (this theory argues), it will inevitably replace the technologically-inferior one, and it's technological superiority--and nothing else--will determine the course of history.

For the technological determinist, the gasoline-powered car replaced the electric car in the 1920s because it was technologically superior.  For the technological determinist, the electric car will ONLY replace the gasoline-powered car of today when the technology is superior.

Again, I'm less interested in the question of fact--WAS the gasoline-powered car technologically superior to the electric powered car of the 1920s--than I am with the question of how history works: is technological determinism the best way (or a valid way) to think about historical change?

Must we choose the "best" technology (best, as determined from a purely technological standpoint)?