General Motors is abandoning support for the Trump administration effort to limit California’s ability to set its own tailpipe greenhouse gas limits as it looks to be in the incoming Biden team’s good graces.
“We are confident that the Biden Administration, California, and the U.S. auto industry, which supports 10.3 million jobs, can collaboratively find the pathway that will deliver an all-electric future,” General Motors CEO Mary Barra wrote in a letter to the heads of nearly a dozen environmental groups Monday.
She said that “to better foster the necessary dialogue,” General Motors would “immediately” withdraw from litigation over the Trump administration’s elimination of California’s authority to set its own tailpipe greenhouse gas requirements stricter than federal levels. General Motors, along with Fiat Chrysler and Toyota, intervened to support the Trump administration in challenges to its action, drawing fierce criticism from environmental groups.
Other automakers, meanwhile, including Ford Motor Company, have partnered with California to follow standards stronger than federal levels. Trump officials sharply weakened fuel economy requirements from the levels set during the Obama administration.
President-elect Joe Biden, in a statement, welcomed Barra’s letter as “encouraging news.”
He described General Motors’s move as a “choice to work with the Biden-Harris Administration and California.” The decision “reinforces how shortsighted the Trump Administration’s efforts to erode American ingenuity and America’s defenses against the climate threat truly are,” Biden added.
“In addition to advancing our ambitious climate goals, this decision will have a positive ripple effect as our nation strives to outcompete our global competitors, create good-paying union jobs here at home, and reclaim our place as leaders in innovation and manufacturing — all of which will be priorities in my administration,” he said.
Biden noted his meeting last week with industry executives and labor leaders, which included Barra and United Auto Workers President Rory Gamble. Biden, in remarks after the meeting, said the group talked about climate change “a lot.”
“We talked about the need to own the electric vehicle market,” Biden said, touting his plans to build more than 500,000 electric car chargers.
Ron Klain, Biden’s recently tapped chief of staff, also touted General Motors’s step in a tweet Monday, hinting that the issue of the automaker’s support for President Trump’s attack on California’s waiver may have come up in last week’s meeting.
“Glad to see @JoeBiden’s leadership — bringing business and labor together a week ago today — is already encouraging progress,” he wrote, referring to Barra’s letter.
California top air official Mary Nichols, who negotiated the state’s fuel economy deal with the group of automakers, including Ford, is reportedly on Biden’s shortlist to run the Environmental Protection Agency. Biden has promised to issue stronger fuel economy and tailpipe greenhouse gas limits once in office.
Ford has also backed more aggressive transportation emissions policies in California. That includes an executive order signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in September requiring all new car sales in the state to be zero emissions by 2035, essentially banning new gas-powered car sales by that year.
Barra, in her letter, didn’t explicitly support Newsom’s target, but she wrote that the “ambitious electrification goals of the President-elect, California, and General Motors are aligned to address climate change by drastically reducing automobile emissions.”
Just last week, General Motors unveiled plans to speed up its production of electric vehicles, announcing more than $27 billion in planned spending on electric and autonomous cars, more than its planned investments in gas or diesel vehicles. The company also said it will launch 30 new electric vehicles in the next five years, two-thirds of which will be available in the United States.
“Climate change is real, and we want to be part of the solution by putting everyone in an electric vehicle,” Barra said in a statement on the announcement last week. “We are transitioning to an all-electric portfolio from a position of strength and we’re focused on growth.”
