“This Sucker’s Quick”: The Accelerating Electrification of the Automotive Industry
President Biden made an unscheduled stop to test drive Ford’s new F-150 pickup truck during a visit to Detroit on May 18.
The U.S. electric vehicle (EV) landscape has changed drastically in the past 15 years. In 2006-07, our founder and CEO, Aimée Christensen, shaped Google.org’s RechargeIT project to accelerate the electrification of transportation. As Google’s “Climate Maven” (yes, her boss gave her that title), she was charged with advancing major climate solutions, leveraging Google’s assets to drive impact. As the Google announcement captured, RechargeIT tapped into Google’s engineering prowess to show the world the future of an optimized energy system, connecting electricity with transportation reducing greenhouse gas emissions. With only one plug-in hybrid in the world at that time, the Google team took Ford Escape hybrids and Priuses to Pat’s Garage in San Francisco to turn them into plug-in hybrids, tracked their performance, and documented the potential that electrification had to decarbonize the transportation sector.
Photos from the Google.org launch of RechargeIT. On the left: Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, on the right: Aimée Christensen with Stanford climate scientist Dr. Stephen Schneider and Google.org Director, Dr. Larry Brilliant.While Aimée was working to accelerate the EV industry, most of us were seeing a Prius on the road for the first time, nudging our friends saying, “Hey, look at that spaceship.” Fast forward to 2021, and there are over 5.6 million electric vehicles worldwide, Elon Musk is hosting Saturday Night Live, and the President of the United States drove 0-60 mph in 4.4 seconds in an electric Ford F-150, exclaiming, “This Sucker’s Quick!” The Ford F-150 has been the best selling car in the United States for 35 years, so this is transformative, and already more than 100,000 trucks have been ordered in just a month since its unveiling!
President Biden is not only whipping around in EVs, but his administration is also incentivizing increased manufacturing of zero-emission vehicles in the United States and a domestic battery recycling program, both crucial steps in meeting our global goal for net zero emissions.
With a $174 billion electric vehicle funding package, the Biden Administration is urging automakers in the U.S. to keep and expand manufacturing at home. Domestic production could be critical to minimizing the emissions associated with EV manufacturing. Although an EV does not emit any greenhouse gases directly, the production of the vehicle can have large impacts on climate and the location of manufacturing has a great impact on overall emissions. If an EV battery is produced in a region that uses low carbon electricity or renewable energy, the vehicle will have low lifecycle emissions. In 2020, renewable energy sources accounted for 20% of electricity generation in the United States, a substantial proportion that will continue to grow as power providers prioritize the clean energy transition The U.S. has immense access to low-carbon electricity and renewable energy and therefore, has the ability to keep EV lifecycle emissions low if manufacturing stays within the country.
Along with his push to keep EV manufacturing in the U.S., President Biden’s electric vehicle plan includes a battery recycling program. By reusing components of the battery, such as lithium, the administration seeks to reduce the need for mining and reduce impact on landfills. The U.S. government has estimated that production of EVs could cause 8 million tons of battery scrap to be dumped in U.S. landfills alone by 2040. The good news is that innovators are already working to close the loop, such as Redwood Materials, founded by former Tesla CTO, JB Straubel, and battery recycling plants are opening up across the U.S., with Biden’s plan incentivizing more.
U.S. auto manufacturers have proven that EVs can be cool - from sexy Teslas to the rugged Ford F-150 - and now the industry needs to ensure that the U.S. will be a global leader in the rapidly growing sustainable manufacturing of zero emission vehicles.
