Can President Biden decarbonize the United States light vehicle fleet? Social-technical compromise scenarios for five automakers

Abstract

President Joe Biden’s stated policy is to decarbonize the US light vehicle fleet by 2050 and improve on projected Obama-era standards for the years until then. The automobile as a socially constructed artifact is subject to social-cultural as well as technical constraints. The four main routes to decarbonization are reductions in horsepower, reductions in vehicle weight, technical efficiency improvements, and switching to zero-carbon-emission vehicles. The last two of these face technical constraints, and the first two are constrained by deeply entrenched social-cultural attitudes and practices. This paper offers an in-depth analysis of technical possibilities available to five major automakers (Ford, General Motors, Kia, BMW/Mini and Nissan) to progressively decarbonize their US light vehicle fleets by 2020 under these technical and social-cultural constraints. It utilizes fine-grained laboratory-standard vehicle test data on all these automakers’ vehicle models for 2011–2021 and in more depth for 2019 weighted by each model’s sales. Using the results of regression analyses it models two possible pathways for each automaker, which meet Biden’s stated objectives with the least possible offence to social-cultural sensibilities. However, there appear to be no ideal pathways that would achieve credible decarbonization trajectories without substantial changes to the social construction of the automobile.