Inevitable: Inside the Messy, Unstoppable Transition to Electric Vehicles

A sweeping portrait of the EV transformation and what it means for all of us.

The question is no longer if electric vehicles will happen, or even when they'll happen, but how. Veteran automotive reporter Mike Colias takes you inside the transformation in this thoroughly reported profile of the hard pivot in the car business, a $2 trillion industry undergoing the biggest change in its 120-year history—a change that is already sending ripples across the entire global economy.

Colias documents the inevitable shift from pistons to electrons from every angle, taking you inside the boardrooms where executives battle over their EV strategies to take on Tesla and, more recently, emerging Chinese powerhouses such as BYD. He brings you to family-run car dealerships deciding if they'll sell EVs—or sell their businesses. He follows entrepreneurs along lonely stretches of road that will soon need charging stations. He talks to power-train engineers whose skills were once the beating heart of the automotive industry but who now find themselves being replaced by coders.

This is an epic exploration that stretches from Detroit to Japan to Germany to China, and from factories in Normal, Illinois, and Haywood County, Tennessee, to a burgeoning mining operation along the shores of California's briny, lithium-rich Salton Sea.

Inevitable is a deeply enjoyable and smart book that uses masterful storytelling to capture the expanse and dynamism of the transition to electric vehicles in profound detail, bringing to life its seismic effects on everything and everyone.

© 2025 Harvard Business Review Press (Ebook): 9781647825393

Release date

Ebook: 4 February 2025