From wheels to systems: Characterizing automobility as technosphere

Automobility’s global role in providing mobility services but with adverse impacts on climate change and land use makes it a critical topic at a planetary scale. So far the role of cars has been mostly addressed from a techno-economic perspective, with complementary but fragmented insights from other social sciences. We provide evidence that understanding automobility as a sub-system of the technosphere compromising human-made artifacts and structures with impacts at planetary scale enables investigations from a systems perspective. Our empirically grounded characterization of causal loops provides insights on intervention points guiding co-evolutionary trajectories between automobility, societies, and local and planetary dynamics along different temporal and spatial scales. We systematically draw on existing modeling approaches for outlining how to model automobility as technosphere in a reduced form. We conclude that policies, measures and cultural shifts should be systematically evaluated according to their impact on car-dependent systems. Our approach offers novel insights for reorienting automobility toward pathways consistent with low planetary impact and high well-being.