Is the automobility regime experiencing a transition towards sustainability? To answer that question, this book investigates stability and change in contemporary transport systems. It makes a socio-technical analysis of transport systems, exploring the strategies and beliefs of crucial actors such as car manufacturers, local and national governments, citizens, car drivers, transport planners and civil society. Two guiding questions are: Will we see a greening of cars, based on technological innovations that sustain the existing car-based system? Or is something more radical desirable and likely, such as the development of travel regimes in which car use is less dominant?

This book is intended for researchers, policymakers, and practitioners interested in the dynamics and governance of low-carbon transitions. Drawing on the Multi-Level Perspective, it develops a whole system reconfiguration approach that explains how the incorporation of multiple innovations can cumulatively reconfigure existing systems. The book focuses on UK electricity, heat, and mobility systems, and it systematically analyses interactions between radical niche-innovations and existing (sub)systems across techno-economic, policy, and actor dimensions in the past three decades. Comparative analysis explains why the unfolding low-carbon transitions in these three systems vary in speed, scope, and depth. It evaluates to what degree these transitions qualify as Great Reconfigurations and assesses the future potential for, and barriers to, deeper low-carbon system transitions. Generalising across these systems, broader lessons are developed about the roles of incumbent firms, governance and politics, user engagement, wider public, and civil society organisations. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.