Detroit sticks with trucks, SUVs despite lofty 2030 goals for EVs

The future may belong to electric cars, but for U.S. automakers, trucks will rule for years to come.

Automakers in North America plan to build more big pickups and sport utility vehicles than electric vehicles well into the late 2020s, chasing sales trends that run counter to the Biden administration’s goal of boosting EVs to half the market by 2030, according to internal production forecasts viewed by Reuters.

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.

The three automakers in a joint statement on Aug 5 described as a “shared aspiration” Biden’s target of pushing EVs to 40-50 per cent 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.

In that case, automakers would have to more than double EV and PHEV production within two years between 2028 and 2030 in order to hit Biden’s low-end target of 40 per cent.