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UC Law Science and Technology Journal

Authors

Shi-Ling Hsu

Abstract

Electric vehicles have been in existence for over a century. Impetus and progress towards commercialization have been uneven. For the most part, government policy on electric vehicle development has consisted of government funding and other support for research and development. The long, meandering path that has now resulted in the emergence of Tesla as an industry leader has been documented carefully in John Graham’s The Global Rise of the Modern Plug-in Electric Vehicle. Graham’s account is remarkably broad and thorough, leaving few stones unturned, and comprehensively detailing the history of electric vehicle policy in a number of countries, and often the interaction among those countries and policies.

Graham’s encyclopedic and authoritative treatment has eclipsed everything else written thus far about electric vehicles and their development. However, insofar as the book is meant to inform public policy for technological innovation, it is too narrow in scope. When it comes to innovation for improving environmental outcomes, the right question to ask is not whether government policy advances a particular technology, but whether it advances a particular environmental objective. Graham takes as exogenous the objective of electric vehicle development, and refrains from asking the normative question of its appropriateness for environmental quality. The answers suggested by this book thus lack an appropriate question: towards what goal is the sought-after technology meant to advance? If advancing electric vehicle technology is predicated on the desirability of reducing emissions of greenhouse gases and other air pollutants, then the policy objective should be couched in those broader terms, rather than the specific technology itself.

Restating the stated objective in terms of the end goal is normatively desirable for two reasons. First, the resulting technologies would be more closely tailored to the end goal. If reducing emissions is the goal, then the technologies would more effectively reduce emissions. Second, opening up the means of technological advance would increase the likelihood of innovation. If the lens is broadened to encompass all technologies and methods of reducing emissions from transportation, then the scope for innovation becomes much broader, and the possibilities exponentially greater. For example, innovation might take the form of reducing the need for transportation or changing the means of transportation. The nature of innovation is such that it is unpredictable, but also surprisingly fruitful when the objective is couched broadly and flexibly.

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