Automotive industry has a special place in the history of the capitalism, of which it determines up to the name of its last great period: “Fordism”. It has to face double environmental constraints since the end of the 20th century: predicted exhaustion of world fossil fuel resources and the control of pollution, particularly atmospheric. Road transport accounts for 20% of the emission of greenhouse gases. The purpose of this work is to analyse how this industry will react to internalize that double constraint by focusing on “innovation”. The theoretical framework proposed by Schumpeter and prolonged by the evolutionary authors is mobilized to test the following assumption: automotive industry is starting a new path of dependence to become emancipated from this double constraint. Consequently, the transition to the hybrid engine, as an “breakthrough eco-innovation”, points out the end of the “lock in” on the previous path characterized by the dependence upon the internal combustion engine.
