The development of Plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs) represents the introduction of an alternative technology into a deeply embedded market—as automobiles and gasoline have been linked to one another through multiple and overlapping cultural, political, and technological developments since the early 1900s. The emergence of a market for PEVs takes place within an existing transportation system based on privately owned individual internal combustion engines that is entrenched in myriad symbolic, material, spatial, and habitual ways, and influences nearly all aspects of social life. This dissertation explores the matrix of political, economic, and cultural elements that combine to create a historically contingent context for the PEV market, and analyzes consumption within this context to offer a case study of consumer behavior in an emerging market. This research uses qualitative data, collected from semi-structured in-depth interviews, group workshops, and focus groups during a three year period, to identify the prevailing qualities consumers attribute to PEVs, and explain how they provide symbolic and functional value for consumers.
