Detroit electric pledge belies gas truck future

Detroit electric pledge belies gas truck future

The three largest U.S. automakers praised President Joe Biden's push to make electric vehicles close to half of all U.S. passenger cars by 2030, but their actual plans involve building fleets of large, gas-powered trucks for years to come.

This report produced by Zachary Goelman.

U.S. President Joe Biden this month signed an executive order seeking to make electric vehicles forty to fifty percent of all cars sold in the U.S. by the end of the decade.

“This is a big deal.” And the Big Three U.S. automakers put out a joint statement describing their “shared aspiration” of hitting Biden’s target.

But internal production forecasts viewed by Reuters paint a different picture: a future ruled by large gas-guzzling trucks for years to come.

Detroit's big trucks are simply among the most popular vehicles - and the most profitable.

This poses a challenge both to the industry and efforts by lawmakers and regulators to cut carbon dioxide emissions from combustion engines.

A Reuters analysis of emission data show that the gas or diesel pickups and SUVs generate on average more than twice the CO2 over their lifetimes as the typical electric vehicle.

Hitting Biden's target would mean producing 7 million or more EVs by 2030.

But according to industry forecaster Autoforecast Solutions, the Big Three currently plan to build just 2.6 million battery-electric vehicles by 2028, making it unlikely to hit the target two years later.

Automakers have been careful to frame their electric vehicle sales goals as dependent on consumer demand and government subsidies.

A Ford spokesperson told Reuters, "We’ve said for months that Ford expects battery-electric vehicles to be at least 40% of our global volume by 2030.

That’s not an aspiration - it’s what we’re anticipating." GM reiterated what it termed its "aspiration" to eliminate tailpipe emissions from light-duty vehicles by 2035, as well as its aspiration to push EVs to 40-50% of its sales volume by 2030.