Limits in the E-mobility transition, an assemblage analysis.

Photo by Maxime VALCARCE on Unsplash

The very first electric vehicles (EVs) came into being at the same time as their internal combustion engine (ICE) counterparts. The 1900s, Europe and US were abuzz with the replacement of the animal traction by a cleaner mechanical version. The 20th century saw the ICE technologies and conglomerates prevail over the EV industries, relegating EVs to the status of a work of science fiction to go back to the future. However, as our early 21st century awakens with the need to radically decarbonise transportation, the EV technology is back into the picture and presented as the ready-made solution. Without debating here the necessity or contingency of electricity as the most suitable fuel to propel decarbonised transportation, I would like to explore the desires and ideologies that drive this new regime of electric mobility, and in doing so, observe its limitations.

Multiple contemporary academic research refer to Transition Theory to explicate the processes at work within wide technological transitions. This scholarship draws on Industrial Ecology lens to explore the emergences within an established system and on the Science and Technology Sociology (STS) to apprehend the societal bonds shaping the observed trajectory of the system. Both of these approaches assume that technology transition are not only technical changes but evolutions between the institutions stabilising a socio-technical regime composed of multiple human and more-than-human actors. Seminal works in the Transition Theory field happen to explore the transition from horse carts to ICE vehicles (Geels 2005). As any theoretical approach comes with limitations, the focus on institutions adopted by socio-technical transition makes it difficult to account for the attitudes in shaping socio-technical regimes, as attitudes remain outside of the management of behaviour by these ‘institutions’.

For this short essay, I build on the Assemblage Theory approach to explore the current transition to EVs. Similarly to the STS, the Assemblage Theory considers things and realities as constituted in the relationships between human and non-human interactions, between material and discursive practices. One of the key distinctions, which can prove valuable to reveal other aspects of the EV transition, resides in the fact that the Assemblage Theory considers any action or behaviour is fuelled by multiple competing desires (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980). Said otherwise, a particular action or behaviour requires a particular relationship of forms of matter and forms of expression that renders competing desires consistent into a course of action and its meaning. This relationship of forms of matter and forms of expression that render an action possible is what is coined an ‘assemblage’ [1]. In other words, understanding our collective actions fuelling the transition to EVs requires to analyse how diverse and contradictory desires are rendered consistent into the current electric mobility transition momentum.

Ian Buchanan (2021) suggests that an analysis adopting the Assemblage Theory analytical framework shall follow seven steps:

• Firstly, it requires to identify the two distinct ideologies or fundamentals (‘strata’) from the inter-relationship of which the desires for electric mobility transition emerge.
• The second step is to delineate the ‘territory’ that electric mobility transition creates out of a pre-existing territory (how it deterritorialises and reterritorialises entities). The ‘territory’ of an assemblage is the plane where contradictory desires are rendered consistent into a given action.
• Thirdly, it requires listing the ‘desires’ that flow within these stratas and lead to the EV mobility re-territorialisation. All actions are made of desires rendered consistent into a course of action and a meaning associated to it.
• The fourth step is to identify the particular relationship of material and discursive forms that guide this reterritorialisation. This relationship (or ‘assemblage’) is what renders various desires consistent into a course of action.
• Fifth, it entails listing what is incorporated into this reterritorialisation process, what is novel and makes it a new territory.
• The sixth step is to list the flows that accumulate in this reterritorialisation.
• And finally, the seventh step allows identifying the limits of this assemblage, by understanding where does its boundaries are situated.

Before testing Buchanan’s analytical framework, it is worth engaging with a brief history of EVs.

A brief history of EVs

The history of electric vehicle technology can be traced back to the 19th century when the desire of replacing animal traction with mechanical traction gained momentum. At that time, the prevailing socio-technical regime heavily relied on horses for transportation of goods and people. This mode of transportation presented various challenges such as limited speed, the need for frequent feeding and rest, and the accumulation of horse waste in cities for instance. At that time, the steam engine which had already transformed the inter-city transportation via rail was adopting its metropolitan and underground form for urban collective transportations besides horse carriages and omnibuses. However, the steam engine technology did not succeed at the scale of personal mobility. These underlying factors paved the way for alternative technologies to power personal transportation. In this context, electric vehicles emerged as a promising niche technology, offering clean, quiet, and efficient transportation for all.

During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, electric vehicles experienced significant growth and development. Innovators like Thomas Edison and Ferdinand Porsche played a crucial role in advancing electric vehicle technology. However, the competing socio-technical regime of the time, dominated by the internal combustion engine and the supporting oil infrastructure, proved to be a formidable barrier. The limited range of early electric vehicles, coupled with the rapid expansion of gasoline filling stations and the dismantling of electric public transportation, favoured the widespread adoption of internal combustion engine cars worldwide. This resulted in a landscape that reinforced the existing regime, making it difficult for electric vehicles to compete. The landscape that we inherit today after a century of ICE vehicles provides ground for EVs too, such as road infrastructures and their service stations, parkings, garage networks, global supply chains, oil drilling and refining infrastructures, car insurance, driving licence, governmental monitoring institutions, urban and regional mobility plans, second hand markets, car shows and media, etc. These various institutions that constitute the ICE car regime function also as a legacy which influence what could be alternative fuel mobility regimes.

Fast forward to the late 20th century in cities cleared from horse waste, arising concerns about environmental pollution, the reliance on fossil fuels, and the impact of climate change started shifting the landscape in favour of electric vehicles. Advances in battery technology and renewable energy production, driven by research and development, increased the range and potential efficiency of electric vehicles. Additionally, growing public awareness and government initiatives promoting sustainable transportation contributed to a changing landscape. Incumbent car manufacturers like Toyota embarked on the transition with hybrid models or vehicles powered by hydrogen cells. The emergence of new automakers like Tesla or BYD dedicated to electric vehicle technology and home charging systems further accelerated the transition away from ICE and tank station networks. Today, electric vehicles have gained significant traction, representing 10% of all new cars sold worldwide. This change of regime goes is facilitated by expanding charging infrastructure of private and public chargers, supportive policies for automakers, charge point operators or grid operators, and a growing market demand, signalling a shift towards a new socio-technical regime centred around electric mobility as decarbonised transportation.

The study of the incumbent socio-technical ICE regime, the pressure from institutional and cultural landscape and the desirability of emerging niche technologies allows to explain possible transition pathways. But what are the underlying desires that fuel the contemporary change to EVs in the first place?

1. Strates

Electric mobility is a vector emanating from the tensions between two distinct ideologies: the belief in new technologies as the cornerstone to expand human agency, and the belief in market mechanisms as the most efficient way to allocate resources.

Modern science — One of the ideologies essential to the advent of electric mobility (and to the ICE too) is the belief that science and technology will improve human life before other social or institutional changes. Considering the movement of people and goods, modern science is at the core of the replacement of the domestication of animal traction with a socio-technical mastery of mechanical traction. This replacement occurred in agriculture machinery or good transportation by road or river too, beyond the personal cars we tend to think about today. The modern science comes along with its set of processes to build and validate knowledge, to gain reputation, to challenge an established paradigm, to fund experimentation and build evidences, to advance knowledge sharing with civilians and industries for the betterment of the society. Education, innovation, and research & development remain at the core of contemporary ways of thinking the wealth of nations. Although the Science and Technology Studies upon which the Transition Theory is built has made explicit that science and technology making is a social endeavour, the belief in modern science as source of solutions to human societies’ problems still fuels the pursuit of techno-solutioning.

Market society — The other ideology that drives the advent of electric mobility is the belief in market mechanisms to best allocate the energy and resources to transport goods and people. A market society is a social arrangement whose institutions have adopted the market mechanisms as the efficient ways to drive the wealth of the nation and contribute to shape market institutions to serve the goal of a wealthier nation. Market societies are of multiple forms, from social democracy to neoliberal hegemony, and simply discard nomadic, agrarian or feudal societies. The market makes the linearly integrated economic and social engineering of the sedentary organisation prevail over the interactive environmental and community ingenuity of the nomadic organisation. The free movement of people and goods is less for the sake of individual nomadic freedoms than for the benefit of the free movement and accumulation of capital by a part of the sedentary population. Despite the many social challenges they spur, market societies continue to represent for the dominant class an efficient way to govern and administer a population by fuelling its aspiration for freedom.

Both EVs and ICE vehicles rendering auto-mobility affordable to the mass emerge from the same tension between these two strata. Before being a contemporary question of carbon intensity, the distinction between these two possibilities resulted from different sciences and techniques (hydrocarbon extraction and petrochemistry v/s electricity production and electrochemistry) as well as different streams of value creation (energy stock management v/s energy load grid management). Eventually, the ICE technology won the race in the XX century with EV by being quicker to deliver the larger range per price, to secure the hydrocarbon value chain and to reshape urban transportation systems [2]. In their early days, these two forms of auto-mobility shared the same disconnection between the carbon stored in fossil forms and materials needed for the manufacturing and circulation of cars, and the side effects on the biosphere of this carbon combustion or alterattion of the landscapes. The contemporary evolution in our understanding of carbon cycles have pushed forward electricity as an alternative fuel which could theoretically be ‘decarbonised’, if the electric energy production and indsutrial manufacturing systems change accordingly. But without challenging auto-mobility as the solution itself.

Auto-mobility practices and infrastructure generate known health and environmental matters of concern which trigger calls for investigating other transportation alternatives, like rail, shared, public or active mobility, if not urban model reinvention, like 15-minutes-cities or transit-oriented development. I argue that these alternatives are unlikely to challenge auto-mobility unless the two beliefs of modern science and market society are challenged or set apart, and we will see why below.

2. Territory

The current electric mobility transition de-territorialises a socio-economic organisation of transportation functioning on a carbon-based auto-mobility to re-territorialise a decarbonised form of auto-mobility. Although the transition to transportation vehicles power by electric energy includes fleets of new e-scooters, buses, trucks, or even air-taxi, planes or boats, the current transition at work remains dependent on the previous regime set in place by the ICE vehicles rather than from scratch. The electrification of our means of transportation is not de-territorialising animal traction in agrarian economies even in geographies with less ICE vehicles on the road. The technical prowess of electrification concern vehicles R&D and production, mobility infrastructures, energy supply and management, and remain financed in concordance to market imperatives. Even the massive incentives and investments made by public financiers are justified as accelerating the creation of markets and the transition of mobility consumers rather than a nationalisation of means of mobility or a limitation of the ability to move people and goods.

In other words, the EV transition of the 21st century is not enacted by the same drivers as the EV transition of the early 20th century. Whereas the initial push for EV deterritorialised animal powered means of transportation to electric powered ones, the current drive for electrification establish its territory by re-territorialising existing the mechanical auto-mobility priced in market societies to be powered with renewable sources of energy. Contemporary EV technologies render diverse desires that were already made consistent in the ICE regime of freedom of movement but now alleviated of the moral burden of environmental degradation.

3. Desires

Actions and behaviours are nothing but a matter of multiple desires. Desire here is understood as an economy of affects, as all that we affect and are affected by. In that sense, not only individuals or living beings have desires. An organisation is inhabited by the desire to grow, a government by the desires to develop the wealth of its population, or an ecosystem by the desires to sustain for instance. So let’s look into the diverse and contradicting desires that circulate in the contemporary EV mobility de-/re-territorialisation. I will list the ones I see as the most prominent:

Decarbonisation — The re-territorialisation of electric mobility is driven by the challenge of replacing fossil fuels with decarbonised fuels, the so-called renewable energies, in order to maintain the viability of the Earth biosphere. Similarly to the early 20th century transition, several socio-technological systems compete with electric mobility, such as hydrogen and shared mobility for instance. Thus, electric mobility is presented as one socio-technical solution among others to advance the decarbonisation agenda. Moreover, this electric mobility regime is bridging with the electrification of thermic regulation systems in buildings and the decentralisation of electricity production. The desire to decarbonise our economies dislodge the pre-exiting model of ICE vehicles and energy production, management and distribution, as well as how efficiently we consume them.

Green Growth — Although the issue of decarbonisation of transport is a matter of survival on Earth, another desire driving the transition to electric is profit. The belief remains that the colossal costs and risks of this transformation of the automotive industry, from energy production to built infrastructures, can only be absorbed by the profits that all players in this transformation can anticipate. And these points of GDP are to be gained through mechanisms of fair market competition. This desire for growth is presented as fundamental to rallying private investments or public opinion for government incentives and regulatory changes. Notwithstanding their potential alignment in some areas, this desire for continued economic growth often clashes with the desire to decarbonise economies for survival on Earth. For instance, the desire to decarbonise economies also opens avenues to explore politically, socially and economically degrowth pathways.

Free movement — Alongside these desires that dislodge the ICE vehicle regime, a third desire fuelling the EV transition is free movement. Electric mobility is a matter of independence for people and goods before it is a matter of survival or profit. As we saw in the previous section, the decarbonisation agenda alleviates the current mobility patterns from guilt or from travel restriction. Indeed, the production and use of EVs still raise many questions about their real environmental footprint and among the reasons why people acquire EVs is free parking in some cases or the avoidance to paying extra to access the centres of cities banning polluting vehicles. Additionnaly, although light EVs with shorter range are enough to fulfil urban daily commute, the market signals show that people and fleet operators are not willing to part from their ICE vehicles unless EVs offer an equivalent range. If it was not for the desire of individual freedom of movement, you could imagine that the transition to a decarbonised transportation world would take a completely different trajectory.

Although the transition to EVs happens throughout its supply chain in multiple geographies, this list of different desires is very much linked to international views which are themselves emanating from a Western mindset [3]. If we were to investigate the desires fuelling the new EV regime in countries like India, China or the Republic of Congo (which take part in the EV supply chain for raw material, assembly or knowledge production), I bet the list would evolve partially; in China for instance, free movement might be less about liberty and freedom than about order and safety; in RPC, green growth is perhaps less of a driver than socially and environmentally preserving equitable growth mechanisms.

4. Relationship between material and discursive forms

The desires underlying the de-/re-territorialisation of the current EV transition are multiple and, as we saw, can be conflicting or competing with one another. And yet, the transition at play appears quite as a distinct pathway of coordinated material and discursive activities. This level of consistency among diverging desires is the product of a particular relationship between forms of matter and forms of discourse. This specific relationship is called an ‘assemblage’ — it is what renders multiple desires consistent into a specific course of action.

One of the critical connection of material and discursive forms that guides the accelerated de-territorialisation of carbon mobility is the ways we account for and speak about carbon cycles. The carbon intensity of industrial activities and consumption practices has become a proxy for weighing decisions to fund our transportation systems. The cycles of carbon are not new, but have become an area of renewed interest for scientific research and more particularly to accounting practices. Moreover, carbon in its carbon dioxide form is not the only matter of concern affecting our atmospheric and oceanic chemical compositions. And yet, the ton-equivalent of CO2 has become a proxy to account for most of the green house gas emitted or stored in the atmosphere. The environmental footprint of populations and their activities now boils down to carbon intensity.

Additionally, the accounting practices are never perfect nor can they encompass the whole chain of inputs/outputs in material or energy. Accounting practices have evolved in the past centuries, and continue to do so, and share the same degree of importance in market economies across the globe. I do not wish to discuss here what is or would be a more accurate way to account for and speak about our collective impact on our biosphere, but I want to stress that carbon accounting has become a common shared lens to assess and guide our decisions and investments, if not to compete and make a difference on various marketplaces. Similarly to GDP being a non-perfect approach to calculate the wealth of nations, it is nevertheless the corner stone shaping and legitimising a wide range of our social, economic and political activities globally.

This relationship of forms of matter and forms of discourse that is comtemporary carbon accounting allows environmental risks to be linked to the cost of industrial transformation and to the effort required by everyone. Since it has become a shared way of accounting across all industries and international instances, carbon accounting also facilitates the race for environmental leadership among nations. Carbon accounting, understood and accepted collectively, authorises the arrangement of different desires guiding the transition of multiple systems, like agriculture, construction or transporation. As for tansporattion, the carbon accounting assemblage renders possible low carbon mobility systems (where EVs currently stand, beside shared mobility or public transport solutions for instance), active mobility modes (like bicycling or walking), as well as de-mobility practices.

You will note that the current EV transition activities assembled through carbon accounting represent a particular form that operates as it dislodges and expands the two fundamentals of technical progress and market societies. However, carbon accounting practices in their contemporary form remain fairly embedded in accounting practices handled by incumbent actors. They eventually favour electric and individual mobility systems rather than alternative fuels, active, or shared mobility practices for instance. This carbon accounting relationship allows for the management of collective risks but does not foster creative or regenerative agencies to accelerate the decarbonisation.

5. Incorporation

An assemblage is functioning when there is an incorporation. The EV mobility is functioning when ICE vehicles get replaced by decarbonised EVs, tank stations by decarbonised energy supply charging sites, but not only. The one-to-one replacement is not all. EV mobility transition also incorporates the sprouting population of charge points in the urban public space, the parking prices including charging sessions, the residential and office areas turned into local electricity power & storage plants, the electric network gathering data on demand to manage its load and its procurement of energy, norm institutions defining EV security standards, policies enforcing a end-date for the last produced ICE, new institutional and economic actors emerging and/or replace incumbent actors, etc. For instance, the Chinese company BYD started as a battery manufacturer for electronic devices and then for mobile phones, now is competing with Tesla as the major EV sellers, besides selling home energy management systems.

The concept of the auto-mobile is getting expanded as it can rely on energy produced ‘at home’ and even lend its battery storage capacity to provide back energy at home. Individual ICE cars were already considered as a part of the house, as a ‘mobile living room’ with a shared media centre and often plenty of personal details left in the car. The EV model incorporates an additional layer of interrelation with energy management. The self-produced electricity contributes to the desire of free movement, in the sense that it contributes to the ideal of self-reliance. Recent EVs produced by Ford in the US play heavily on this Western archetype of freedom.

What is also interesting to observe is what is not incorporated, or kept outside of it. For instance, the vehicle and the infrastructure form factors haven’t changed much despite the change of technology allowing to review the standard design. Electric cars remain designed to be sold as a status symbol and the mean of transportation for a family of four, hinting at the fact that the industry keeps on banking on individual ownership business model, the end-user being the nuclear urban family.

If this incorporation of EV mobility brings some changes, it is a change in energy management and vehicle technologies in order not to change auto-mobility private ownership regime and people ability to move freely. Despite the evolution of car pooling, rental or leasing mechanisms, the current transition to EV re-territorialises vehicle private ownership model for the long term and perennises incumbent energy and automotive industries.

The EV transition assemblage dislodges the individual ICE vehicle regime dependent on a centralised fuel supply and incorporates potential decarbonised means of transportation that interface greatly with distributed energy infrastructure. However, this current EV transition assemblage does not go to the extend of incorporating in mobility systems a fleet of connected vehicles that are partly shared in parts (e.g. batteries, data, self-driving, …).

6. Flows

As the assemblage renders multiple circulating desires consistent into a set of activities that incorporate novel things into a given landscape, the following step is to explore what are the flows that accumulate in via this assemblage.

1. Renewable Matter & Energy — the industrial change of a transportation sector is a voluminous flow of matter, in and out. As the knot of the assemblage lies in carbon accounting, this material flow in vehicles, infrastructure, grid, etc. oughts to bring the planetary atmospheric system in a carbon negative state compared to its current state. Firstly, it is not only a matter of producing new electric vehicles, but decommissioning and ensuring the circularity of all materials composing them. EV manufacturers have started to build plants to recycle the most costly part of EVs today, the battery. Secondly, the energy required to build and transition the transportation systems oughts to be less carbon intensive as a whole, beside the energy required to move the EVs around. Thirdly, it is a matter of reduced particle and pollutant emissions, in production and in use. The material flows are not a mere accumulation but expose a way of accounting the end-to-end assessment of the EV transition success. A second important flow accumulating in the EV transition assemblage is energy, and more particularly its balance rather than its accumulation. Socio-technical systems like vehicle-to-grid or vehicle-to-home are nascent and illustrate that energy storage represents a potential of additional flexibility for the energy grid (given that the current grid is updated). How this energy is best distributed, saved, and balanced in the system will be critical beyond solely its origin of production. Additional to the energy could be listed flows of renewed pleasure circulating when driving.
2. Mileage, Data & Knowledge — the main flow in a transportation system remains the miles driven per person on decarbonised energy. With the accumulation of mileage comes accumulation of data on driving and charging, of knowledge on usage and mobility patterns, on the efficiency of kWh/km, data on risks, range or battery life, etc. The more driven miles recorded, the more the intersection of modern science and market economy keeps on thriving and accumulating knowledge and transforming it into relations of powers.
3. Capital — with a potential reduced carbon footprint based on these flows (even a negative carbon footprint ultimately), the current EV transition has to accumulate flows of capital of public & private investments to be successful. The ROI, the origin and the beneficiary of capital invested in the decarbonisation of mobility represents a key success indicator to monitor and assess to whom this socio-technical transition benefit the most. And who and what remains unaccounted.

7. Limitations

This assemblage analysis of the EV transition allows us to spot some interesting limits of the current EV transition produced by the assemblage linked on contemporary carbon accounting. These limits can inform us on how to alter the current EV transition trajectory.

Territorial accounting — For instance, the current EV transition assemblage started with a replacement of ICE auto-mobility technology by EV auto-mobility. This means that the assemblage may end if auto-mobility ends rather than simply if a more efficient energy or technology is preferred (like Hydrogen, etc.). As we saw during Covid pandemic induced lock-downs, and as it exists in some autocratic countries, movements of population and goods can be restricted if not banned, roads closed, borders installed over night. Elsewhere, city governments may ban individual vehicles for a day or more to give back city centres to pedestrians, active mobility modes and public transports. Already in the ICE regime, matters of public health or neighbourhood and environmental protection were called upon to limit the auto-mobility regime. But because the current EV transition is rendered consistent as EV auto-mobility through material and discursive forms of carbon accounting, health and environmental protection matters can challenge the EV auto-mobility carbon accouting node by drawing on beliefs in modern science and market society. Said otherwise, the EV transition may be limited by ensuring that decarbonised transportation de-territorialisation re-territorialises a cumulative decarbonised city or territory.

Energy usage pricing — A second limit can be thought of when we notice that the EV transition assemblage emerged from the moment auto-mobility could offer a minimum range at an affordable price. This signal functions as a market proof that the technology is worth investing private and public funds in. Therefore, the EV transition assemblage could end if this new auto-mobility does not provide range at an affordable cost to all. Beside the cost of acquisition, recent energy market volatility and higher prices as ultra-fast on-the-go charging sites showed that the affordability of EV usage is far from a given. Higher carbon taxation or revamped carbon accounting on lifecycle vehicle and infrastructure production and energy use may hinder the ability to generate profits, and therefore slowing down the private interests for the auto-mobility transition. In other words, the range-cost ratio might be a place to imagine creative policies, with for instance differential energy costs depending on the number of people in the vehicle, the average speed, or the vehicle ownership model.

Remotely controlled movements — A third limit of the EV transition assemblage can be spotted as the EV transition began with the freedom to transport goods and persons. This mean that the vehicle remain the property, or under control, of the EV owner, and potentially in-sync with their home energy management systems. Therefore, the EV auto-mobility would end when government may enforce drastic regulations on energy usage during extreme weather events or even close parts of the grid (similarly to what we see with water usage in times of extreme heat events). Even the World Wide Web that is also driven by ideals of freedom has become an easy target for governments to temporary shut networks down or control them to prevent free speech or free movements. Given the connectivity and inter-dependence of networks of contemporary EVs, the auto-mobile free movement dream could be quite at risk to be remotely controlled by governments in an EV regime compared to an ICE regime. Even those succeeding to be self-reliant on their autonomous electricity production would still remain at the mercy of police enforcement limiting the range, the boundaries, or the speed of connected vehicles.

Concluding words

This essay presents an experimental exploration of a phenomenon using Assemblage Theory as an analytical framework. In contrast to Transition Theory’s socio-material approaches, Assemblage Theory transcends established institutional frameworks to emphasise the significance of what renders diverse desires consistent into a course of action. It also enables to derive inherent limits within the phenomenon. The seven-step methodology proposed by Ian Buchanan serves as a valuable tool for policymakers, policy analysts, or innovation managers, to decipher the agency of desires and non-human elements in shaping the trajectory of the phenomenon to date. It offers insights into how changes in the material-discursive relationship can be designed to curb or influence the course of the phenomenon.

1. ‘Assemblage’ is the English translation proposed by Philipp for the French term ‘agencement’. For this essay in English, I follows Rolfe (2015) in that ‘assemblage’ works as an English translation if we understand assemblage as a verb, ‘assembling’. ↩︎
2. Many more things happened — have a read ↩︎
3. My positionality is as a white European middle-age man ↩︎