Ford, GM Discuss Long-Term Emissions Strategies
April 15, 2008
Last week, the Ford Motor Company announced its intention to cut its vehicle emissions by 30 percent by 2020. Ford is the first major automaker to pledge to reduce greenhouse emissions, although many automakers have emission-reducing technologies, including zero-emission vehicles, waiting in the wings. Ford’s plan closely follows legislation that requires carmakers to raise the fuel efficiency of their vehicles to 35 mpg by 2020.
Ford’s emissions pledge comes after a coalition of environmental activists pushed the automaker to detail its plans to reduce emissions that encourage global warming. Ford’s environmental performance has been especially irksome to green vehicle proponents, partially because the company backed off of earlier promises to increase the fuel efficiency of its SUVs. It also had to pull back from promises it made to build 250,000 hybrid vehicles by 2010. Ford says that it is now confident that it can meet the 2020 goal because it has refined its modeling and projection techniques, and believes its emissions goals are realistic.
While General Motors has not committed to emissions or production targets, the environment and clean fuel technology is also on the General’s mind. GM has outfitted the Chevy Tahoe and the GMC Yukon with dual-mode hybrid power trains, and also plans to introduce a light-duty V-8 clean diesel truck in North America. The company is also pursuing the final engineering needed to bring the Volt to production in 2009.
GM is moving toward fuel cell vehicles in the long term, and sees the electric vehicle program as a natural lead-in to hydrogen propulsion. FCV’s would virtually zero out the impact of vehicle emissions on the environment. GM has said that it cannot continue the effective development of FCVs until the infrastructure to support hydrogen FCVs is in place.
Photo Credit: Vince Petaccio
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