For environmentalists, the EV commitment brings déjà vu

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CEOs of the world’s largest automakers met with President Barack Obama at the Washington Convention Center in 2011 to announce that they had agreed to double the common gasoline-powered financial system of their automobiles to 54.5 miles per gallon – the biggest improvement in history.

Five years later, after Donald Trump was elected, companies asked the president-elect to renew the demands. He did.

This historic past was contemporary in the thoughts of local weather activists and others as President Joe Biden on Thursday signed a government decree on the White House garden, also flanked by auto executives from Detroit, which set a formidable national goal. although volunteering to get half of all automobiles purchased in the US no longer producing emissions by the start of the last decade.

“Trusting automakers to comply with a voluntary pledge is like believing that your New Year’s weight loss resolution is a binding contract,” said Dan Becker, director of the Center for Safe Climate Transport campaign. Biological Diversity. “They violated their commitment by going to Trump.”

But this time, automakers are aligning themselves with the investments and statements they made about the shift to carbon neutrality even before Biden signed his government decree on Thursday as proof of their sincerity.

“Collectively, the auto industry is committed to investing more than $ 330 billion to bring exciting new electric vehicles to market, including plug-in hybrid, battery and fuel cell electric vehicles,” said John Bozzella, president and CEO of the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, which lobbies for major automakers, said in an announcement.

General Motors Co., for example, said in June it could spend $ 35 billion on more than 30 plug-in cars and a total of 4 batteries by 2025. And Ford Motor Co. announced a month earlier that ‘It could increase its estimates on plug-in fashions by more than a third, to $ 30 billion, with the goal of electrifying 40% of gross sales by 2030.

Stellantis, formed by the merger of Fiat Chrysler and the PSA Group, said last month it had budgeted more than 30 billion euros ($ 35 billion) for electrification and software. It could have 5 battery factories in Europe and North America by the peak of the last decade.

Biden’s announcement, coupled with the new emissions laws unveiled Thursday, may be the key to meeting his formidable local weather targets by reducing US emissions by 50% by 2030 and achieving a carbon-free financial system by 2050. None of these goals will be achieved without modifications. the transportation sector, the largest source of greenhouse fuel emissions in the United States.

“The future of the American auto industry is electric,” Biden said Thursday with a range of electric and hybrid cars on the South Lawn of the White House as a backdrop. “It’s electric; there is no going back. “

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