General Motors said it will strive to make every vehicle it sells produce zero emissions by 2035, a significant step that likely means that the U.S. auto giant will transition from selling gas-powered cars.
“For General Motors, our most significant carbon impact comes from tailpipe emissions of the vehicles that we sell — in our case, it’s 75%,” said CEO Mary Barra in a LinkedIn post Thursday. “That is why it is so important that we accelerate toward a future in which every vehicle we sell is a zero-emissions vehicle.”
Barra doesn’t explicitly say that the automaker will stop selling gas-powered vehicles, but she said the company worked with the Environmental Defense Fund “to develop a shared vision of an all-electric future and an aspiration to eliminate tailpipe emissions from new light-duty vehicles by 2035.”
That roadmap is part of General Motors’ new larger goal to be carbon-neutral by 2040. Barra said that “means removing emissions from all our products, including every vehicle we produce, and all of our global operations.” The company also plans to power all of its U.S. facilities with 100% renewable energy in the next decade and all of its global facilities by 2035.
General Motors’ announcement comes in the same week that President Biden said he intends to switch the entire federal fleet of vehicles over to electric and zero-emissions. In a sweeping climate change executive order Wednesday, Biden directed federal agencies to ramp up purchases of electric cars, ensuring those vehicles are also made in the United States.
Biden has also promised to build out more than 500,000 public electric car chargers, though he’ll need funding from Congress in order to accomplish that goal.
In the weeks after Biden was elected, General Motors quickly raised its commitment to electric vehicles. The auto company dropped its support for the Trump administration’s challenge to California’s authority to set its own tailpipe greenhouse gas standards. At least one other automaker has followed suit.
Around the same time, Barra also announced General Motors would spend more than $27 billion on electric and autonomous cars, eclipsing its planned investments in gas or diesel vehicles. The company also said it would launch 30 new electric vehicles in the next five years, two-thirds of which will be available in the U.S.
“We feel this is going to be the successful business model of the future,” said Dane Parker, General Motors’ chief sustainability officer, during a briefing with reporters, according to CNBC.
“We know there are hurdles. We know there are technology challenges. But we’re confident that with the resources we have, and the expertise we have, that we’ll overcome those challenges, and this will be a business model that we will be able to thrive in the future,” he added.
