The automotive industry is changing at a rapid pace thanks to the introduction and rising popularity of electric and autonomous vehicles, new software, battery technologies, and innovative design that will in every respect change the way the planet transports people and goods from Point A to Point B. The goal, of course, is to create a more sustainable world, a goal that has become all the more urgent in our age of climate crisis and biodiversity loss. How we steer this transition will determine whether the future is a more equitable one or if it preserves or even codifies inequalities that are much more apparent as the world moves toward a zero-emissions future.

The Association of Foreign Press Correspondents (AFPC-USA) delved into this topic further, joined by a team of experts who have examined the way the public and private sectors and global forums like the United Nations Climate Change Conference have responded to discuss challenges, set ambitious targets, and forge partnerships to accelerate the transition. This educational program was held on Monday, February 6, and was developed with the support of General Motors. The Association of Foreign Press Correspondents (AFPC-USA) was solely responsible for the development of the content of this program. It was moderated by journalist Vanessa Jaklitsch, a U.S. correspondent with Telemadrid and a board member of the Club of Foreign Press Correspondents in the USA.

According to Shilpan Amin, the Senior Vice President and President for GM International who is responsible for GM operations outside of North America and China, electric vehicles meet GM’s vision of “a world of zero crashes, zero emissions, and zero congestion.” He says GM “had to develop a portfolio of EVs that changed the customer experience in total, ushering in an era of “quietness,” “smoothness,” “connectivity,” and cutting-edge technology.

For Lena Hansen, RMI’s Managing Director and Chief Strategy Officer, whose work is focused on telling the integrated story of RMI’s work and connecting that to global climate change action, tackling these issues is paramount. She emphasizes RMI’s position as “an independent nonprofit organization of more than 650 experts working to accelerate the clean energy transition to a clean, prosperous, and zero carbon future for all.”

Andy Oury, the Engineering Technical Leader for High Voltage Battery Packs at General Motors who has 23 years of experience in automotive product development, focused on chassis and battery engineering, working in the automotive industry “is really exciting right now” because “we are fundamentally transforming the way vehicles are powered.” He points out that those who work in the industry have an incredible opportunity to “come to work every day and put in [their] full and best efforts to do something that's helping make the planet better by addressing climate change with this transition to electric vehicles.”

Shilpan Amin

Lena Hansen

Andy Oury

Vanessa Jaklitsch

Below, international correspondents will find a summary of some of the most important takeaways from this educational program:

ON GENERAL MOTORS’ PROJECTS AND THE SCIENCE OF BATTERIES

Oury mentions GM’s work on the Ultium battery platform, which can be effective across multiple EV models in the realms of power, range, and performance. “It's really interesting seeing that we can actually take many of our employees that have deep experience working on internal combustion engines or transmissions or the vehicles that surround them,” he says, and to see how these workers’ skills transfer to battery and electric vehicle engineering.

There are two ways to charge a battery and an electric vehicle, he says after explaining the basic and “straightforward” science of batteries: The first way is “free electricity” through what engineers refer to as “regenerative braking,” which works by reversing electric motors that propel a car. The second way is by “plugging them in and charging them off the grid,” which is considerably “less carbon intensive than burning gasoline or diesel.”
By putting electrical vehicles on the grid, the grid can be decarbonized in two “fundamental” ways: EVs “help develop the technology that's useful to the grid” and “help us manage the way power flows on the grid, either through managed charging where we control when we're pulling energy off the grid.”

ON HOW THESE MARKETS ARE PROGRESSING

Amin says the market has “got to drive change around the customer base and affordability, which can be jump started through incentives” for people to more seamlessly transition to EVs. GM is also driving “chemistry improvements and battery cost reductions” to make EVs more affordable in the long run.

GM has to work in collaboration with both suppliers and dealers within the company as well as world governments to support the creation of charging infrastructure to accelerate the transition. “Our role is not just to transform the company and bring the products to market… but also to help educate and influence others to also participate in this,” he says.

ON WHAT COMPANIES AND GOVERNMENTS NEED TO DO TO MAKE SURE EVERYONE CAN AFFORD EVs IN THE FUTURE

Hansen says there could be “significant demand for charging in low-income communities if public infrastructure or at-home charging in affordable housing” and notes it is imperative to “invert the pyramid and focus on those market segments where the most passenger miles are”—such as in two and three-wheeler vehicles—”and where there's no off-the-shelf solution like for multi-unit dwellings and for low and middle income communities.”

Affordability, equitable access, and adoption can greatly “expand the market” for EVs, she says. She points out that governments are making strides to accelerate the transition. For instance, in India, the government “recently announced a really powerful loan guarantee program” and in the United States, a used EV tax credit was included in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). Hansen acknowledges GM “is the leader on EVs for the economy segment and plans to phase out internal combustion engines by 2035.”
Systemic changes “that actually can help realize the full potential of those government and corporate actions” must also be considered; she says “more than 23,000 jurisdictional authorities around the US are struggling with their existing processes for deploying EV charging infrastructure.”
Both individuals and communities “without access to home charging, particularly those in multi-unit dwellings are being excluded from the EV transition” and the EV market “will struggle to scale” if technical and economic approaches to better infrastructure deployment, right to charge policies, streamlining and providing best practices and guidelines for zoning, infrastructure financing, and other factors are not considered.

ON CURRENT AND SHIFTING PARADIGMS SURROUNDING THIS TOPIC

Oury says there is an ongoing paradigm shift in regard to making EVs more equitable that is championed by early adopters of the technology, who are moving away from the idea of single-family, detached dwellings with garages that families can charge their vehicles in.

Fast charging is “something that's perceived as a luxury today” but is “something that's really critical and necessary for equitable deployment of EVs” generally. He adds that “EV battery costs have dropped by a factor of about 10 in the last decade,” which means “we're now at the point where electric vehicles can be profitable.”
GM is in the process of building several plants in the U.S. that “will let us build enough batteries for around 1 million electric vehicles a year depending on the mix.”

ON COP27

Amin says a successful transition and addressing the climate crisis and reducing emissions overall “stems from partnerships and private sectors and public sectors coming together.”

He says that COP27 is thankfully no longer about “convincing people about climate change and the effects it can have to the environment” and is instead focused around climate change’s impact on countries around the world. “Magic happens” when the public sector and the private sector can come together now that they’re in agreement about the issue's seriousness.

ON VIRTUAL POWER PLANTS

According to Hansen, virtual power plants—which RMI defines as a “collection of small-scale energy resources that, aggregated together and coordinated with grid operations, can provide the same kind of reliability and economic value to the grid as traditional power plants”—are “the most important and most overlooked domestic energy resource today.”

A virtual power plant partnership has thus far been successful at breaking down “a lot of the policy and regulatory and market-based challenges so that we can catalyze greater adoption of virtual power plants for the benefit of, of society and to be able to leverage those resources in all our homes, including electric vehicles to make money to increase the overall affordability of our resources.”