The Biden White House has unveiled draft mandates and aspirational targets to drastically cut vehicle carbon emissions and accelerate the shift to electric models.
The roll-out provides the most complete picture yet of how the White House hopes to reduce vehicle-generated emissions and the state of talks with large automakers.
President Biden also hopes to juice domestic manufacturing of EVs, batteries and related supplies.
The executive order sets a non-binding goal of 50% of all new cars sold in 2030 to be zero-emissions models, including electric and hydrogen fuel cell models.
The same order will instruct agencies to set binding emissions and efficiency rules beyond the mid-2020s for light-duty vehicles and also medium- and heavy-duty vehicles, like semi-trucks.
In related news, Ford Motor Co., General Motors, Volkswagen and others are announcing non-binding goals of having 40% to 50% of their U.S. sales come from fully electric, fuel cell or plug-in hybrid vehicles by 2030.
The new mandates are slated to be much tougher than Trump-era light-duty vehicle rules and will essentially restore Obama-era mandates through 2025, then go slightly further in 2026.
