After announcing a commitment to reach carbon neutrality by 2040, GM became the nation’s largest automaker to make such an aggressive pledge. Geraldine Barnuevo, environmental strategies and sustainability senior manager at GM, said the company’s work toward zero emissions through electrification was years in the making.
“GM established its triple zero vision in 2017, however, we have been working in the electric vehicle area since 1996,” Barnuevo told Cheddar. “We are embracing the science behind climate change, aiming to reduce carbon emissions in line with the level of decarbonization that the Paris agreement requires.”
By 2035, the company’s fleet is expected mostly to be made up of electric vehicles. Barnuevo called the plan one of the company’s most ambitious, and by 2025, the automaking giant expects to mark a milestone in its journey, expecting to offer 30 all-electric models worldwide.
Also, in an effort to ramp up toward a greener future, she said that GM is investing more than $27 billion over the next five years into electrification and autonomous technologies.
“Business must play a leading role in this transformation of the global economy to one that prioritizes and rewards innovative solutions to the climate crisis,” Barnuevo said.
On the political side, President Joe Biden recently signed executive orders aimed at aggressively reducing the nation’s carbon output by no longer providing federal dollars for oil and fossil fuel programs. According to Barnuevo, GM is “encouraged” by the president’s commitment to climate change.
“We look forward to working with the Biden administration to help advance policies like incentives for consumers that reflect a vision of an all-electric future for America,” she said.
While GM has committed to achieving carbon neutrality, Barnuevo said in order to affect real change on the climate front, it has to be a joint effort by businesses across the globe. GM and several hundred other companies have committed to the Business Ambition for 1.5°C that calls on firms to set climate targets to limit global temperature rise.
“We are encouraging others to come along with us in this journey. We are working with our suppliers to bring them along. We are setting science-based targets to achieve our carbon neutrality goal, and we are working with the community, stakeholders, NGOs including EDF to make this a reality,” Barnuevo said.
The State Department had been in talks with Elon Musk’s Tesla company to buy armored electric vehicles, but the plans have been put on hold by the Trump administration after reports emerged about a potential $400 million purchase. A State Department spokesperson said the electric car company owned by Musk was the only one that expressed interest back in May 2024. The deal with Tesla was only in its planning phases but it was forecast to be the largest contract of the year. It shows how some of his wealth has come and was still expected to come from taxpayers.
At 100 years old, the Goodyear Blimp is an ageless star in the sky. The 246-foot-long airship will be in the background of the Daytona 500 — flying roughly 1,500 feet above Daytona International Speedway, actually — to celebrate its greatest anniversary tour. Even though remote camera technologies are improving regularly and changing the landscape of aerial footage, the blimp continues to carve out a niche. At Daytona, with the usual 40-car field racing around a 2½-mile superspeedway, views from the blimp aptly provide the scope of the event.
You'll just have to wait for interest rates (and prices) to go down. Plus, this deal's a steel, the big carmaker wedding is off, and bribery is back, baby!
It’s a chicken-and-egg problem: Restaurants are struggling with record-high U.S. egg prices, but their omelets, scrambles and huevos rancheros may be part of the problem. Breakfast is booming at U.S. eateries. First Watch, a restaurant chain that serves breakfast, brunch and lunch, nearly quadrupled its locations over the past decade to 570. Fast-food chains like Starbucks and Wendy's added more egg-filled breakfast items. In normal times, egg producers could meet the demand. But a bird flu outbreak that has forced them to slaughter their flocks is making supplies scarcer and pushing up prices. Some restaurants like Waffle House have added a surcharge to offset their costs.
William Falcon, CEO and Founder of Lightning AI, discusses the ongoing feud between Elon Musk and Sam Altman, and how everyday people can use AI in their lives.
U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum “will not go unanswered,” European Union chief Ursula von der Leyen vowed on Tuesday, adding that they will trigger toug
The Trump administration has ordered the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to stop nearly all its work, effectively shutting down the agency that was created to protect consumers after the 2008 financial crisis and subprime mortgage-lending scandal. Russell Vought is the newly installed director of the Office of Management and Budget. Vought directed the CFPB in a Saturday night email to stop work on proposed rules, to suspend the effective dates on any rules that were finalized but not yet effective, and to stop investigative work and not begin any new investigations. The agency has been a target of conservatives since President Barack Obama created it following the 2007-2008 financial crisis.
