When oil prices rise, more people start looking at electric cars. That link has always been real, but new research from the London School of Economics published in March 2025 argues it's no longer the main driver. The paper describes the current EV transition as "systemic" and "path-dependent": systemic because electric vehicles don't exist in isolation, sitting instead at the centre of a network that spans battery manufacturing, charging infrastructure, electricity grids, software platforms, supply chains, and government policy; path-dependent because the decisions made early in that build-out shape everything that comes later. The relationship between fuel prices and EV uptake, the authors say, is breaking down.
The path-dependent framing explains why some regions are further along than others. China made early commitments across EV infrastructure, industrial strategy, and supply chain positioning, and the transition there now has enough momentum to run without oil prices as a catalyst. Norway used its sovereign wealth fund to subsidise purchase prices so heavily that the country has, by most measures, completed its shift to electric vehicles. Other parts of Europe are moving at varying speeds. Regions that delayed those early investments are finding progress harder to sustain. The LSE authors caution against assuming a single global tipping point. What actually exists, they argue, are multiple regional transitions running at different paces, each dependent on conditions that still require active support from policy and infrastructure spending.
On supply chains, the paper raises familiar concerns about critical minerals, but the video makes the case that the technology has moved faster than the critique. LFP batteries, which use iron and phosphate rather than cobalt and nickel, now dominate the Chinese EV market and are spreading elsewhere. They cost less, run cooler, and last longer than NMC cells, though with slightly lower energy density. Sodium-ion chemistry extends the argument further: sodium is far more abundant than lithium worldwide, and while lower energy density currently limits it to shorter-range applications, it demonstrates that EV production is not locked into a single set of constrained materials. The paper's core insight holds here too: systems adapt when constraints appear, and the battery industry has been doing exactly that for years.
Bottom line: The argument that EV adoption is just an oil price reaction has been a fixture of EV skepticism for years. This paper doesn't fully dismiss that link, but it makes a reasonable case that the transition is now running on something more structural. How durably that holds in regions that missed the early investment window is where the real uncertainty sits.