Mike Colias's Book - inEVitable: Inside the Messy, Unstoppable, Transition to Electric Vehicles

What if the future of cars isn’t a finish line but a tug-of-war between electrons, policy, and supply chains? That’s the lens we bring to a candid conversation with Reuters U.S. Autos Editor Mike Colias, author of Inevitable, as we chart how EV adoption can stall in the short term and still advance for the long haul. We unpack why China sprinted ahead by cracking two stubborn problems—price and charging—while the U.S. wrestles with policy whiplash and Europe navigates uneven progress across member states.Mike takes us from the Edison-Ford era to CATL’s meteoric rise, showing how battery breakthroughs became business moats. We talk about the moment the industry underestimated Tesla, how an EV’s simpler powertrain lowered barriers to entry, and why legacy automakers found themselves playing catch-up just as China’s industrial policy hit its stride. The result: a global realignment where cost curves, charging reliability, and mineral refining capacity determine who sells the next million vehicles.We also go deep on regulation and geopolitics. In the U.S., shifting incentives and frozen penalties chilled demand and postponed plants. In Europe, an end date for combustion is softening, but emissions pressure remains high, with hybrids, e-fuels, and biofuels reshaping compliance. Looming over everything is the minerals and midstream bottleneck—lithium, nickel, graphite, and rare earths mostly refined in China—creating leverage that can swing markets overnight. Expect familiar playbooks: Chinese brands building inside tariff walls, Western OEMs doubling down on hybrids now while investing in batteries, software, and charging to compete later.If you’re trying to make sense of the next five years—where the casualties might fall, which strategies actually close the gap, and how “new energy” links mobility to the grid—this conversation offers a clear map of the forces at work. Subscribe, share with a friend who loves cars or policy, and leave a review telling us where you think EV adoption will peak first and why.