Techno-capitalist colonialism powered by combustion masculinity in the transition to electric utility vehicles: an analysis of Australian car advertising

The automotive industry has historically marketed vehicles through a narrow lens of masculinity, power, and autonomy, values that reflect and reproduce colonial logics of control and occupation. How this gendered framing shapes the transition to sustainable transport and reinforces colonial forms of automobility has received less attention. Car advertisements have centred white male drivers while marginalizing passengers, pedestrians, cyclists, and broader mobility systems. This dynamic is especially evident in the marketing of utility vehicles (utes) in Australia, where the vehicle serves as both a tool for masculinized labour and recreation and as a cultural marker of white settler masculinity and entitlement to land. This study examines how these longstanding cultural values are being reworked within the transition to electric-powered vehicles. Drawing on theories of media framing and cultural identity markers, we analyse contemporary Australian advertisements for combustion powered and hybrid utility vehicles. We find that the narratives and visual strategies sustaining ‘combustion masculinity’, emphasizing ruggedness, technological grunt, and domination of nature, are being adapted to fit an electrified future. These representations rework colonial masculinized automobilities into a more seamless, quiet, and sophisticated techno-capitalist colonial project marginalizing climate awareness and social responsibility while continuing to centre individualized, white masculinized drivers.