Shaping an emerging market for electric cars: How politics in France and Germany transform the European automotive industry

Julia Hildermeier and Axel Villareal ()
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Julia Hildermeier: ENS Cachan - École normale supérieure - Cachan
Axel Villareal: SPIRIT - Science Politique Relations Internationales Territoire - Université Montesquieu - Bordeaux 4 - Institut d'Études Politiques [IEP] - Bordeaux - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

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Abstract: Our account of the interaction between politics and market actors in the French and German automotive industries tries to show how a classical economic explanation is not sufficient to understand and analyse the sector's current transformation based on the development of the electric car. From an economic-sociological point of view, we analyse how the negotiations between incumbent firms and challengers on the one hand, and public politics on electric cars on the other, affect the existing power balance in the French and German car industries. Although most carmakers are contributing to stabilising the sector's existing "conception of control" by adapting to the electric vehicle (EV) as a challenge to their strategies, national electric car programmes support carmakers in their desire to control innovation know-how as much as challengers seek to establish themselves in an emerging market. Together with carmakers' strategies, the role of politics is decisive in determining the degree to which the industry is changing. The transformative influence of politics should thus be taken more explicitly into account by economic sociology.

Keywords: Electric Car; France; Automotive Industry; Policy; Politicisation Germany; Automobile Low-carbon Politics; Vehicles; Industrial (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011-12
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-03469137
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Published in European Review of Industrial Economics and Policy , 2011, 3

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