Beyond the green rhetoric: the marketability of sustainability in electric vehicles

Abstract

Electric Vehicles (EVs) are promoted as a sustainable way of transport claiming to be environmentally friendly, with different governments in India launching several schemes to promote them. Recent studies reveal that EVs release more toxic emissions than their non-electric counterparts. Furthermore, the batteries result in the extraction of minerals from the Global South. In this article, we draw from Marxist criticisms of consumerism, sustainable development, and technological fetishism to interrogate how notions of sustainability are legitimised to support EV consumption in India. Dependency theory has been employed to study how policies to provide a sustainable means of life for a few are enacted at the expense of most. By examining India's EV policies within global dependency relations, the article demonstrates how EV promotion represents a form of commodity fetishism reproducing unequal development patterns.