The Socio-Technical Transition for EVs in China

Abstract

In 2021, China is already the largest electric vehicle (EV) market with more than half of global sales. Compared to the situation ten years ago, EV development in China has experienced a huge growth almost from nothing. This development is a complex socio-technical transition process, which cannot be simplified as technology progress or business success. Therefore, based on the framework of multi-level perspective (MLP), this thesis aims to study how the socio-technical transition for EVs in China take place from the perspective of interactions and dynamics. The literature, reports, news and policy documents related to EV development and vehicle industry in China are collected, and the collected data and information are sorted and categorized into different elements for analyzing and proposing the interrelationships of these elements and how they change. The typical and significant findings and insights of the analysis are validated by semi-structured interviews with experts. A set of interaction mechanisms based on the MLP framework is proposed to explain how dynamics emerge and affect the socio-technical transition, and the effect of interactions on the transition is also conceptualized. The main findings of this thesis show how the socio-technical transition take place: Energy security and oil price are secondary landscape factors to drive the transition, and the smog issue and climate change emerge in succession as dominant landscape factors. The former opens a window of opportunity for early commercialization of EVs in China, the latter directly initiates the boom in EVs. The pressure from landscape developments makes the government, car manufacturers, consumers and the public have to make responses, which are or lead to element dynamics, such as the transformation of public perception and opinion on carbon emissions. Due to that there are interactions among these elements, more element dynamics are generated, such as intelligent and networking development of EVs. These element dynamics participate in the process of industry environment reshaping, industry layout adjustments and industry resource reallocation to further prompt the transition process, which helps EVs gradually gain socio-technical advantages and quickly penetrate the vehicle market.