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

很少有技术能像汽车那样深刻地影响社会。自20世纪被广泛采用以来，内燃机汽车已经重塑了我们的景观、休闲时间和出行模式。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的未来进行重组。该项目旨在了解围绕驾驶的性别叙事和汽车的社会技术身份如何在电动汽车方面发生变化。人工制品可以为性别表演提供一个焦点，汽车代表了许多男性化实践的人工制品之一。与男性气质和技术追求相对立的是，女性气质一直与自然和环保主义联系在一起，尤其是在20世纪初第一批电动汽车的营销中。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的空间。个人和人工制品的社会身份是通过实践形成的。在汽车文化中，赛车就是这样一种实践，是崇敬汽车文化的巅峰。赛车不仅为开发者提供了一个测试新机械创新的舞台，而且还代表了一个强烈的性别空间，在这个空间中，男性气概被塑造、强制执行和复制。随着世界最大的汽车运动管理机构国际汽车联合会（FIA）批准的首批环保赛车项目的出现，电动方程式锦标赛和极限电动方程式锦标赛构成了研究向电动汽车过渡的重要框架。本项目将考察自上而下和自下而上方法之间的动态关系，以全面理解电动汽车社会身份的构建及其物质性。通过对赛车行业人士和日常电动汽车司机的采访，并辅以文件和图像分析，该项目将研究性别认同和汽车认同如何在电动汽车周围融合在一起。这两个新颖的赛车联盟是这一分析的中心，因为他们重新定义可持续性、性别认同和汽车的努力是在更广泛的批判性科学和技术研究框架内理解的。要了解电动汽车的社会身份，与影响其发展的群体接触是至关重要的。我将通过第一人称叙述的采访来回答以下研究问题，并通过文件和图像分析来理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（赛车和街道车）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)性别与蓬勃发展的电动汽车文化之间的关系是什么？具体来说，当女性与自然的历史联系与汽车技术的男性化领域合并时，是否出现了一种紧张关系？

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?