(Reuters) – The future may belong to electric cars, but for U.S. automakers, trucks will rule for years to come.
The popularity of Detroit’s big trucks is a challenge both to the industry and efforts by lawmakers and regulators to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other exhaust gas pollutants from combustion engines.
Unflagging demand among American consumers for full-size trucks and SUVs, among the industry’s most profitable vehicles, will largely fund a combined $100 billion in investment commitments for new North American EV and battery plants by General Motors Co (GM.N), Ford Motor Co (F.N) and Stellantis NV (STLA.MI). Factories that build Detroit’s trucks employ thousands of union workers – a key constituency for President Joe Biden.
At the same time, Detroit’s combustion-powered large pickup trucks and SUVs generate on average more than twice the CO2 over their lifetimes as the typical electric vehicle, according to a Reuters analysis of data generated by Argonne National Laboratory’s GREET modeling tool – the same model used by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
The three automakers in a joint statement on Aug. 5 described as a “shared aspiration” Biden’s target of pushing EVs to 40-50% of production by 2030. That goal would mean boosting annual North American output of electric and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles to 7 million vehicles or more.
The entire industry, however, is planning as of now to build just 2.6 million battery electric vehicles (BEV) and another 585,000 plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEV) in 2028, according to AutoForecast Solutions (AFS), which compiles production estimates that are widely used across the industry.
If automakers stick to those plans, EVs would account for just 15% of total North American production in 2028, with plug-in hybrids representing another 3.4%.
