Earth Protect Blog

BY JIM MOTAVALLI | FEB 15 2021

In case you missed it, General Motors made headlines around the world last month when it announced that it was on track to eventually abandon the internal combustion engine. “General Motors to Eliminate Gasoline and Diesel Light-Duty Cars and SUVs by 2035,” said The Washington Post. “GM to Phase Out Gas- and Diesel-Powered Vehicles by 2035,” echoed The Wall Street Journal. The automaker then backstopped its announcement with a cheeky Super Bowl ad starring comedian Will Ferrell that promised, “We’re coming, Norway,” referencing the country with the highest EV market share.

This is huge, right? The company, once the world’s biggest automaker and firmly associated with gas-guzzling pickup trucks and SUVs like the Chevrolet Suburban, is supposedly saying goodbye to internal combustion by an explicit date that’s in the ballpark with tentative deadlines given by three US states, European countries such as Great Britain, Sweden, France, and Spain, and—this is the big one—China, which has the world’s largest auto market.

But before we pop the organic champagne, let’s rewind a bit. What did GM, which after all aligned with the Trump administration in rolling back the Obama-era fuel economy regulations, actually say? It said the company has “an aspiration [my emphasis] to eliminate tailpipe emissions from new light-duty vehicles by 2035.” That’s not a firm commitment, is it? Some environmental advocates and electric vehicle enthusiasts are skeptical. “GM doesn’t actually say it will end gas-guzzler production by 2035,” said Dan Becker, director of the Safe Climate Transport Campaign at the Center for Biological Diversity. “It’s a goal.”

To its credit, the company is up-front about the aspirational nature of its announcement. “The central point is that we made a firm commitment to carbon neutrality by 2040,” Jessica James, assistant manager of sustainability communications at GM, told Sierra. “That is happening. But some things need to come together to meet the 2035 deadline—it’s out of our direct control.” 

James said GM wants to see an expansion of the EV tax credit for electric vehicles, more government investment in EV infrastructure, and federal research money for next-generation battery research. “Those things together could get us to the big inflection point, with customers opting for EVs en masse,” she said. “Think of it as a stretch goal. We think we can get there, but it will take a massive effort.” 

Or, in other words, GM’s ability to meet its goals is contingent on other policy and market stars aligning. “No one is holding them to this,” said Mike Ramsey, a vice president and analyst at the business consulting firm Gartner. “I think GM is serious in the sense that it is an aspirational goal. If the market doesn’t move that way fast enough, they aren’t going to stop making engines and gas tanks just because they said they would. Consumers need to make the switch in big numbers.”  

Car collector Jay Leno, host of Jay Leno’s Garage, had a similar take. “It’s admirable that GM made that statement—now they have to meet it,” Leno told Sierra. Leno is a well-known lover of historical horsepower, but he’s also an enthusiast for green cars—putting 90,000 miles on his Chevrolet Volt, which he says he has had to fuel with gasoline only once a year. Leno thinks that in the future today’s collectible Mustangs, Ferraris, and Corvettes could be relegated to rare recreational or track use, while electric cars rule the roads. “Technology moves at a voracious rate,” Leno said. “Give the engineers a task and they can comply. If you’d said in 1965 that GM would be able to build a 2021 Corvette with 500 horsepower that gets nearly 30 miles per gallon on the highway, people would have laughed.”