Looking back: why the electric automobile lost market share. How social behavior can affect product technology

The authors present a behavioral analysis of electric automobile market share loss, which shows that the explanation of technological trajectories requires more than a reference to performance characteristics and social factors. Although historical narratives furnish us with plausible accounts incorporating social and behavioral variables, they do not identify the underlying general processes and sometimes treat technology as a black box. The viewpoint developed here, grounded in behavioral archaeology, causes one to look at both the particular factors and general processes at work in a specific case. It gives one the tools for integrating technological, behavioral and social variables in the authors´ explanations.