They aren't really, it is just that modern engines are incredibly tolerant of what you put in them. Some survey found that the different octane tanks get mis-filled a large portion of the time with other octanes or higher ethanol ratings. Even within an octane rating what is in there varies a lot. The changes needed to make a four stroke work on propane is very small. And an old diesel engine will run on almost any liquid that will burn but not evaporate at stp. The cars will get smarter and be able to do better with different voltages at some point.
A lot of new cars are "Flex-fuel" and will take literally anything short of diesel. They just adjust timing to the octane rating.
In the bay area there's a lot of E85 fuel stations which are ~half the price per gallon (~$2.50) and work with these cars. Slightly less milage but the price difference more than makes up for it. If your car has the 'flex-fuel' sticker you may as well take the cheaper fuel imho.
Gasoline pumps standardized because a nozzle is relatively simple. And then use a smaller nozzle for cars that only take unleaded gasoline and you can't put leaded gas into the wrong car.
On the other hand, diesel nozzles didn't really standardize until the last 10 years or so. Mostly diesel stations used the old (larger) standard, unless it was catering to trucks and then it's a really big nozzle for bigger flow. But sometimes you'd get an unleaded gasoline style nozzle, cause those would fit in diesel cars too, and there's no fume recovery system. But then VW and other diesel car makers started putting in rube goldberg systems to try to reduce the amount of gasoline you can put in a diesel car... And then the diesel pumps with the smaller size nozzle became difficult to use, so they've probably been replaced.
OTOH, a funnel is an easy, low tech fix to a nozzle problem. Can't really adapt a charging socket so easily.
Gas and Oil didn't start off as standardized (nothing does) - got there over time. I'm sure EV will get there - eventually. Needs a standards group like ASTM maybe.
This will require government regulation, which won't happen until there are enough angry EV drivers to get political attention, and then enough political will to overcome the corporate lobbyists fighting standardization. Remember standardization is good for consumers and bad for producers. Look how long it took to force apple to use usb-c chargers.
This doesn’t make sense. There’s already a standard everyone has adopted (NACS). Tesla has chargers which will start becoming available to other drivers next year. Other companies will compete or die.
