Adopting the Electric Vehicle: Racing, Culture, and the Transition to Sustainable Mobility

很少有技术像汽车一样深刻地塑造了社会。自世纪内燃机汽车被广泛采用以来，它已经重塑了我们的景观、休闲时间和移动模式。向电动汽车（EV）的过渡正在迫使汽车本身的精神，与之相关的性别性能以及可持续移动性的未来进行重组。本项目旨在了解电动汽车如何改变驾驶的性别叙事和汽车的社会技术身份。人工制品可以为性别表演提供焦点，汽车代表了许多男性气质实践的人工制品之一。与男性气质和技术追求相反，女性气质一直与自然和环保主义联系在一起，特别是在世纪初第一批电动汽车的市场营销中。因此，今天的电动汽车占据了这些相互冲突的叙述的十字路口。 个人和人工制品的社会身份是通过实践塑造的。在汽车文化中，赛车就是这样一种实践，作为崇拜汽车文化的顶峰。赛车不仅提供了一个竞技场，开发人员可以在其中测试后来在街头汽车中实施的新机械创新，而且还代表了一个强烈的性别空间，在其中男性气质被塑造，强化和再现。随着最大的赛车运动管理机构国际汽车联合会（FIA）批准的第一批具有环保意识的赛车倡议的出现，电动方程式锦标赛和极限E构成了研究向电动汽车过渡的重要框架。本项目将研究自上而下和自下而上方法之间的动态关系，以全面了解EV的社会身份及其重要性的构建。通过对赛车行业演员、日常电动汽车司机的采访，并在文件和图像分析的支持下，该项目将研究性别身份和汽车身份如何围绕电动汽车走到一起。这两个新颖的赛车联盟是本分析的中心，因为他们重新构建可持续性，性别认同和汽车的努力在更广泛的关键科学和技术研究框架内得到理解。要了解电动汽车的社会身份，与影响其发展的群体接触至关重要。我将回答以下研究问题与采访生产第一人称叙述，由文件和图像分析支持，以了解赛车和公共领域之间的动态互动。首先也是最重要的：1）电动汽车和现有汽车文化（包括赛车和街道车辆）之间的关系是什么？2)电动赛车在创造街头电动汽车新的社会技术身份方面发挥了什么作用？3)性别与新兴的电动汽车文化之间有什么关系？具体来说，是一个紧张局势之间的历史协会的妇女与自然，因为它与男性化的领域融合的汽车技术？

Few technologies have profoundly shaped society as the automobile. Since its widespread adoption in the 20th century, the combustion engine car has reshaped our landscapes, leisure time, and patterns of mobility. The transition to electric vehicles (EVs) is forcing a restructuring of the ethos of the car itself, the gendered performances with which it is associated, and the future of sustainable mobility. This project aims to understand how gendered narratives around driving and the socio-technical identity of the car are changing with regard to the electric vehicle.Artifacts can provide a focus for gendered performances, and the automobile has represented one of these artifacts for many practices of masculinity. Antithetical to masculinity and technological pursuits, femininity has been linked with nature and environmentalism, especially in early 20th century marketing of the first EVs. Thus, the EV today occupies a space at a crossroads of these conflicting narratives. Social identities of individuals and artifacts are shaped through practices. In car culture, racing is one such practice, as the pinnacle of venerating car culture. Not only does racing provide an arena in which developers test new mechanical innovations later implemented in street cars, but also represents a strongly gendered space in which masculinities are shaped, enforced, and reproduced. With the emergence of the first environmentally conscious racing initiatives sanctioned by the largest motorsport governing body, the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA), the Formula E Championship and Extreme E constitute an important frame for studying the transition to electric mobility. This project will examine the dynamic between top-down and bottom-up approaches to comprehensively understand the construction of the EV's social identity and its materiality. Through interviews with racing industry actors, daily EV drivers, and supported by a document and image analysis, the project will examine how gender identity and automotive identity are coming together around the EV. The two novel racing leagues are the center of this analysis as their efforts to reframe sustainability, gender identity, and the automobile are understood within a wider frame of critical science and technology studies. To understand the social identity of the EV, engaging with the groups impacting its development is vital. I will answer the following research questions with interviews producing first person narratives, supported by a document and image analysis to understand the dynamic interaction between the racing and public realms. First and foremost: 1) What is the relationship between the EV and existing car culture (in both racing and street vehicles)? 2) What is the role of electric racing in creating the new socio-technical identity of the street EV? 3) What is the relationship between gender and the burgeoning electric car culture? Specifically, is a tension manifesting between the historical association of women with nature as it merges with the masculinized domain of automotive technology?