The “greening” of passenger cars has become a major concern for European transport policy makers since the electric car hype began in 2008. Especially the implementation of hybrid and electric cars has forged new interest coalitions and conflicts around sustainable mobility on the European level: While car industry representatives aim for favourable technical standards and infrastructure deployment so as to integrate hybrid and electric cars into existing transport systems, recurring on industrial and technology policy issues, environmental stakeholders, new market players from the electricity and telecommunication sectors translate Sustainable Development in terms of new demand patterns for innovative mobility services that require a combined intermodal (electric) transport systems. On the background of these conflicts on the meaning of sustainability in transport, this paper studies the „making of“ the European Strategy for Clean and Energy Efficient Vehicles, a major EU policy instrument to support and integrate green cars. Combining an interpretative institutionalist framework with elements from economic and political sociology of the EU, I describe sustainability as a trans-industrial regulation scheme in which public policy makers, established and newcoming industrial players, interest groups as well as consumers negotiate and define their interests. I ask how these actors define transport politics facing new economic and technological uncertainties. With the clean cars strategy, new political arenas have emerged beyond the formalised political spaces in and around the European Commission. Based on a mapping of actors' positions and a series of expert interviews, I show how the notion of “sustainability“ has become key for actors to legitimise and position themselves in current EU transport policy, opening up a field of ”sustainable mobility politics“.
