An electric Lexus RZ 450e is on display at Brussels Expo in 2023. Racial minorities are less likely to drive electric cars, which could hurt efforts to increase adoption of climate-friendly vehicles.

In 2022, automaker Lexus linked up with Marvel’s “Black Panther” franchise for a commercial promoting the company’s inaugural American electric vehicle, the RZ 450e. It featured actress Danai Gurira, who plays General Okoye in the Oscar-nominated film series, in a car chase. 

The EV was sleek. But something felt off — and it wasn’t just the vehicle’s nearly $50,000 price tag. Here was Lexus, a foreign automaker, trying to tether itself to the seismic cultural moment that “Black Panther’s” Afrofuturistic narrative had summoned. Yet the result was shlocky, not racially inclusive.

Lexus wasn’t alone. The entire electric vehicle industry has been in a prolonged identity crisis when it comes to race.

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According to a Pew Research Center poll released in April, 32% of Americans surveyed said they would seriously consider buying an electric model for their next vehicle. That’s a fairly modest number considering that the first mainstream electric cars hit the market over 15 years ago. But overall uptake of EVs by racial minorities is especially disappointing. 

If California is a bellwether, things are looking grim: According to one report, only 2.7% of Black Californians and 7.6% of Latino Californians drive electric vehicles, well below each group’s total driving population. Asian American and Pacific Islander EV drivers, at 12.8%, were closer to their population proportion.

EVs are a critical, maybe even indispensable, part of the fight against climate change. But this technology can’t make the impact we need it to if it receives only modest uptake among one racial group.

In the 1960s, sociologist Everett Rogers developed the notion of “diffusions of innovations.” According to his theory, there are several kinds of adopters. There are “innovators” — for example, those who were risk-agnostic and purchased a Nissan Leaf or Chevy Volt right after their releases, based purely on the potential of........

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