It’s Friday, January 29, and General Motors is trying to make its gas-powered cars a thing of the past.
General Motors, which sells roughly 8 million vehicles around the world every year, is aspiring to end all sales of light-duty gasoline- and diesel-powered vehicles, including pickups and SUVs, by 2035. This target is part of the company’s wider pledge to become carbon-neutral by 2040, GM announced Thursday.
Over the next five years, the company plans to invest $27 billion in hopes of offering 30 all-electric models globally by mid-decade. GM also expects that 40 percent of its U.S. models will be electric by 2025. The company hopes that this will drastically reduce its emissions, given that tailpipe emissions account for 75 percent of GM’s carbon footprint. To address its remaining emissions, the company is committing to source 100 percent renewable energy to cover its operational power needs by 2035 and to offset the rest with carbon credits.
These goals come at a time when President Joe Biden has called for policies that will expand electric vehicle use across the country, namely by replacing the federal government’s 645,000-deep vehicle fleet with “clean electric vehicles made right here in America, by American workers.” The consumer market for electric cars is already surging, with worldwide sales of electric vehicles growing by an estimated 40 percent last year despite the COVID-19 pandemic and a drop in overall vehicle sales.
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