of markets, technologies, and institutional support for electric vehicles

Abstract. The Southern California economy is at a crossroads. The end of the Cold War has meant significant reductions in defense investment and the downsizing of the region's aerospace-electronics industrial complex. Although the region is technology rich, it lacks the institutional support and corporate know-how necessary to develop new markets, new industrial relations, and new production systems. To remedy these failings, a rare mix of institution building and policy initiatives is tending to cohere around advanced-ground-transportation technologies and in particular the development of an electric vehicle industry. In this paper we examine federal, state, and local policy efforts to develop an electric vehicle industrial complex in Southern California