Warum elektrische Utopien festgefahren sind: Das Imaginary Automobilität als Grenze der Verkehrswende am Beispiel der Elektromobilität in Deutschland

Electric vehicles were supposed to transform our daily mobility practices, urban landscapes and economies. Why has e-mobility not delivered the more radical technological future that many had hoped for, especially during its early phase? The concept of sociotechnical imaginaries allows us to address such questions symmetrically by looking at the co-production of continuity and change. Instead of evaluating high-tech visions, the imaginaries perspective explores how socially and materially embedded political collectives make sense of their past, present, and future. This paper examines the case of electric mobility in Germany since 2009 to show how seemingly disruptive technologies do not only challenge problematic systems in the present, but also serve to sustain them. It analyses how a potentially open mobility future is co-produced with an entrenched automotive present: through processes of depoliticization, the stabilization of forms of life along preconfigured trajectories, and the careful preservation of national self-perceptions.