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.

Mike Colias is a Wall Street Journal reporter and veteran of the US automotive beat, based in Detroit, where he has covered General Motors for twelve years and added Ford to his duties five years ago. His agenda-setting coverage includes scoops on multibillion-dollar EV factory investments, executive hirings and firings, and closely guarded decisions to add or cut vehicle lines. With access to all the key players in the automotive industry, he has tracked the transition to electric vehicles since the start through hundreds of sources across the auto sector, from mom-and-pop car dealers in the heartland to factory workers, union reps, investment bankers, and entrepreneurs. Colias has been a business journalist for more than twenty years.