One Zero, Two Transitions: Continental Prices, Local Incomes and Europe's Unequal Transition Timetable
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: Europe's consumer transition combines continentally priced technologies, locally formed household payment capacity, nationally uneven cushioning and uniform policy schedules. This methodological working paper develops a transition access framework that distinguishes time price, outright-purchase burden, amortised burden, financeability, practical accessibility and the probability of reaching readiness before a common policy date. It argues that technology diffusion normally accommodates unequal incomes partly through time: higher-capacity markets adopt first, while learning, depreciation and used markets permit later entry elsewhere. A synchronised mandate compresses that sequence and can convert an ordinary adoption lag into hardship, nominal compliance or asymmetric policy renegotiation. The paper treats tradable-price convergence as an orthodox market outcome rather than a malfunction, and identifies the distributional problem that emerges when policy makes access to particular capital goods increasingly binding. Slovakia's automotive production model illustrates the production-access inversion: a territory may succeed as a site of transition production while its households remain poorly positioned as transition consumers. The 2035 new-car standard is analysed as a manufacturer fleet rule, not a direct household purchase ban. The paper proposes a falsifiable empirical programme using specification-matched prices, harmonised earnings, household financeability, charging and installation access, used-market pathways and uncertainty-aware readiness estimates.
Author: Ryder, John F.
Language: English
Subfield: Electrical and Electronic Engineering
Field: Engineering
Domain: Physical Sciences
SDG: Reduced inequalities
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7204903597
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