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I have been confronted recently with many papers considering the triggers and obstacles favoring and/or hampering the adoption of electric vehicles (EVs). The large majority of these papers include claims such as…“Compared with traditional gasoline vehicles, EVs have several societal and environmental benefits such as reduce carbon emissions, enhance energy security and promote the usage of renewable and clean energy”(Wang et al., 2018) or…“These policies are in essence aiming to change the societal norm of fossil fuel based internal combustion vehicles into a new norm of fuel efficient EVs via a number of push and/or pull measures.”(Nordlund et al., 2018) or…“Plug-in electric vehicles are seen as a promising option to reduce oil dependency, greenhouse gas emissions, particulate matter pollution, nitrogen oxide emissions and noise caused by individual road transportation”(Ensslen et al., 2018), just to mention some published in this journal during in the past year. However, the number of similar cases in the transportation literature is countless. While I certainly do not want to criticize the quality of the work on adoption of new powertrain technologies that is the actual content of these papers, I want to raise awareness about the suitability of electric vehicles to actually contribute to sustainability. Nowadays, and in line with the expectations of the press, politicians and the general public, many researchers take as God-given that the switch from conventional vehicles to new powertrain technologies, such as EVs, constitutes a big step towards the decarbonization and sustainability of transport systems. Nevertheless, and in spite of its …