Inevitable

A Wall Street Journal reporter's sweeping portrait of the EV gold rush and what it means for all of us.

For electric vehicles, the question is no longer if they'll happen, or even when, but how—and veteran automotive beat reporter Mike Colias shows you just that. This is his deeply reported insider view of the hard pivot in the car business, a $2 trillion industry that hasn't undergone a change this profound in its 120-year history. Already, the transition to EVs is sending ripples across all aspects of the global economy.

Colias documents the massive transformation from internal combustion engines to battery-powered vehicles from every angle. He takes you inside the boardrooms where executives chasing Tesla battle over EV strategies, in fear of being left behind. He brings you to family-run car dealerships wrestling with the decision of whether to sell EVs—or sell their business. He follows entrepreneurs looking for hidden opportunities along lonely stretches of road that will soon need charging stations. He walks the floors of battery factories where scientists try to pack ever more power into the same space. He talks to power train engineers whose skills, once the beating heart of the car business, are rapidly becoming obsolete.

Change is inevitable, but rarely have we seen someone capture what business transformation means in so much detail, bringing to life such change's profound effect on everything and everyone.