Technology transition pathways towards electric mobility: the reconfiguration of stakeholder networks

Technology transitions cause replacements or reconfigurations of embedded socio-technical practices and regimes and thus actor interaction and relation might change and offer opportunities for new technologies (by creating new standards or dominant designs, changing regulations, infrastructure and user patterns). In this paper it is argued that two "extreme" types of transition pathways are imaginable for electric mobility: Firstly it would be a technology that is substituted by a new one but the users do actually not change their behaviour in the socio-technical regime. Travel patterns remain the same as before (e.g. trip purpose, origin and destination, modal choice etc.). There might be some minor changes needed in terms of refuelling routines. In the second case, new mobility patterns emerge which mean significant changes to trip purpose, origin and destination, modal choice and trip distribution. In the first case, EVs have to come close to the performance of conventionally vehicles; in the second case this is not necessary. This paper aims at illustrating how an integrative perspective can be applied to the debate. Different technical settings can be observed in recently presented and partly commercialized electrical vehicles (BEVs, FCEVs, hybrids). We will address the question whether there are reasons to anticipate that these different settings support different transition pathways of the user-fuel-infrastructure systems.