IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/bcu/greewp/greenwp24.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Car Industry and Climate Change: A Historical Review

Author

Listed:
  • Mattias Nasman
  • Grace Ballor

Abstract

In the second half of the twentieth century, the car industry became a lightning rod for debates about human contributions to climate change. Widespread motorisation galvanised the green movements of the 1960s and 1970s, regulators increasingly demanded the use of pollution and climate mitigation technologies, and carmakers responded to this changing consumer and regulatory environment by gradually observing stricter emissions standards and innovating away from combustible engines at the turn of the millennium. This paper traces the arc of the relationship between car manufacturing and climate change through a business historical lens, from the development of internal combustion engines and their alternatives to the political economy of an energy transition and the decision to prioritise electric vehicles. Our analysis aims to lay a foundation for further research on industry and climate change.

Suggested Citation

  • Mattias Nasman & Grace Ballor, 2024. "The Car Industry and Climate Change: A Historical Review," GREEN Working Papers 24, GREEN, Centre for Research on Geography, Resources, Environment, Energy & Networks, Universita' Bocconi, Milano, Italy.
    • Handle: RePEc:bcu:greewp:greenwp24
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://repec.unibocconi.it/iefe/bcu/papers/GREEN_wp24.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Joshua Linn, 2016. "The Rebound Effect for Passenger Vehicles," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 2).
    2. Ballor, Grace & Pitteloud, Sabine, 2023. "Introduction: Capitalism and Global Governance in Business History," Business History Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 97(3), pages 459-479, September.
    3. Collantes, Gustavo & Sperling, Daniel, 2008. "The origin of California's zero emission vehicle mandate," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 42(10), pages 1302-1313, December.
    4. Joshua Linn, 2016. "The Rebound Effect for Passenger Vehicles," The Energy Journal, , vol. 37(2), pages 257-288, April.
    5. Tommaso Pardi, 2021. "Prospects and contradictions of the electrification of the European automotive industry: the role of European Union policy," International Journal of Automotive Technology and Management, Inderscience Enterprises Ltd, vol. 21(3), pages 162-179.
    6. repec:cdl:itsdav:qt9pd8m8gs is not listed on IDEAS
    7. Tommaso Pardi, 2021. "Prospects and contradictions of the electrification of the European automotive industry: the role of European Union policy," Post-Print hal-03102947, HAL.
    8. Josef Taalbi & Hana Nielsen, 2021. "The role of energy infrastructure in shaping early adoption of electric and gasoline cars," Nature Energy, Nature, vol. 6(10), pages 970-976, October.
    9. Jones, Geoffrey, 2017. "Profits and Sustainability: A History of Green Entrepreneurship," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780198706977.
    10. Neil Rollings, 2023. "The development of transnational business associations during the twentieth century," Business History, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 65(2), pages 235-259, February.
    11. Godek, Paul E, 1997. "The Regulation of Fuel Economy and the Demand for "Light Trucks."," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 40(2), pages 495-509, October.
    12. Bergquist, Ann-Kristin, 2019. "Renewing Business History in the Era of the Anthropocene," Business History Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 93(1), pages 3-24, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Mamkhezri, Jamal & Khezri, Mohsen, 2024. "Vehicle miles traveled induced demand, rebound effect, and price and income elasticities: A US spatial econometric analysis," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 158(C), pages 224-240.
    2. repec:fan:istois:v:html10.3280/isto2022-045001 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Calabrese, G.G. & Falavigna, G. & Ippoliti, R., 2024. "Innovation policy and corporate finance: The Italian automotive supply chain and its transition to Industry 4.0," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 46(2), pages 336-353.
    4. Petr Pavlínek, 2023. "Transition of the automotive industry towards electric vehicle production in the east European integrated periphery," Empirica, Springer;Austrian Institute for Economic Research;Austrian Economic Association, vol. 50(1), pages 35-73, February.
    5. Arpita Asha Khanna & Ilka Dubernet & Patrick Jochem, 2025. "Do car drivers respond differently to fuel price changes? Evidence from German household data," Transportation, Springer, vol. 52(2), pages 579-613, April.
    6. Fidel Gonzalez & Diya Mazumder, 2025. "Do Declining Vehicle Attributes Eliminate the Direct Rebound Effect?," Eastern Economic Journal, Palgrave Macmillan;Eastern Economic Association, vol. 51(2), pages 198-224, April.
    7. Liane Pinho Santos & João F. Proença, 2022. "Developing Return Supply Chain: A Research on the Automotive Supply Chain," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(11), pages 1-24, May.
    8. Nehiba, Cody, 2024. "Timing Matters: Estimating within-day variation in the rebound effect," National Center for Environmental Economics-NCEE Working Papers 348907, United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
    9. Bruno Jetin, 2023. "Electric batteries and critical materials dependency: a geopolitical analysis of the USA and the European Union," Post-Print halshs-04381144, HAL.
    10. Jenn, Alan & Azevedo, Inês L. & Michalek, Jeremy J., 2019. "Alternative-fuel-vehicle policy interactions increase U.S. greenhouse gas emissions," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 124(C), pages 396-407.
    11. Zhang, Linlin & van Lierop, Dea & Ettema, Dick, 2025. "The effect of electric vehicle use on trip frequency and vehicle kilometers traveled (VKT) in the Netherlands," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 192(C).
    12. Rhodes, Ekaterina & Scott, William A. & Jaccard, Mark, 2021. "Designing flexible regulations to mitigate climate change: A cross-country comparative policy analysis," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 156(C).
    13. Szalavetz, Andrea, 2022. "Transition to electric vehicles in Hungary: A devastating crisis or business as usual?," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 184(C).
    14. Cheon, Jiyeon, 2025. "Distributional effects of a vehicle miles traveled tax over the different vehicle efficiency," Economics of Transportation, Elsevier, vol. 41(C).
    15. Breschi, Valentina & Ravazzi, Chiara & Strada, Silvia & Dabbene, Fabrizio & Tanelli, Mara, 2023. "Driving electric vehicles’ mass adoption: An architecture for the design of human-centric policies to meet climate and societal goals," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 171(C).
    16. De Borger, Bruno & Mulalic, Ismir & Rouwendal, Jan, 2016. "Measuring the rebound effect with micro data: A first difference approach," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 79(C), pages 1-17.
    17. Bhardwaj, Chandan & Axsen, Jonn & Kern, Florian & McCollum, David, 2020. "Why have multiple climate policies for light-duty vehicles? Policy mix rationales, interactions and research gaps," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 135(C), pages 309-326.
    18. Vance, Colin & Frondel, Manuel, 2015. "From fuel taxation to efficiency standards: A wrong turn in European climate protection?," VfS Annual Conference 2015 (Muenster): Economic Development - Theory and Policy 113171, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    19. Banzhaf, H. Spencer & Kasim, M. Taha, 2019. "Fuel consumption and gasoline prices: The role of assortative matching between households and automobiles," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 95(C), pages 1-25.
    20. Timilsina, Govinda R. & Dulal, Hari B., 2009. "A review of regulatory instruments to control environmental externalities from the transport sector," Policy Research Working Paper Series 4867, The World Bank.
    21. Gillingham, Kenneth & Munk-Nielsen, Anders, 2019. "A tale of two tails: Commuting and the fuel price response in driving," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 109(C), pages 27-40.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bcu:greewp:greenwp24. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Carlotta Milani (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/eabocit.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.