By 2030, half of all cars and light trucks sold in America could be electric, hydrogen-fueled, or plug-in hybrid, as reported the Wall Street Journal.
Of those meeting at the White House last Friday were Ford Motor Co., General Motors Co., and Stellantics NV, the maker of Chrysler. The initiative will fund supply-chain research and development, and manufacturing. Additionally, the automakers have asked for purchase incentives as well as national electric-vehicle charging infrastructure.
The Biden administration is expected to announce more stringent fuel-efficiency standards, as well as raise the average miles per gallon of cars to 52 by 2026. While this had initially been set by the Obama administration to 54.5 by 2050, the Trump administration had lowered it to 40.
This is a deal that hinges heavily on the $1 trillion infrastructure bill currently circulating through Congress that would provide a $7.5 billion grant for cities and states to build charging stations. The bill also includes $6 billion in grants for the production, development, and recycling of batteries.
Vehicle makers plan to meet the new fuel-efficiency targets by producing and selling more electric vehicles. EV sales were 3% of all of the U.S. auto market in May and June of this year, according to industry data. The increase to 50% within the next nine years “represents a dramatic shift from the U.S. market today,” said automakers.
“A decade ago, we were talking about reaching around 50 miles per gallon of gasoline in 15 years,” a senior administration official said. “Today for new autos, we are talking about reaching around 50% of vehicles that don’t require even one gallon of gasoline to go a mile in less than a decade. This is a paradigm shift.”
‘ESGY’ Invests in the Future, Including EVs
The American Century Sustainable Growth ETF (ESGY) is a non-diversified fund that invests in large cap companies with large growth and value potential while also ranking highly on ESG metrics.
ACI’s proprietary model assigns a score to each security for financial metrics as well as a score for ESG metrics, which are combined. The highest overall scoring securities are selected within each sector, creating a portfolio with strong performance and higher ESG ratings than the stocks in the Russell 1000 Growth Index.
The fund is a semi-transparent ETF, meaning that allocations are disclosed on a quarterly basis, not daily. As of its last disclosure, ESGY held electric vehicle and component companies like Tesla; Aptiv, a company that develops technology for the automotive sector; and Applied Materials Inc, a company that provides material engineering solutions for semiconductor manufacturing.
ESGY has a total annual fund operating expense of 0.39%.
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