In August, Ford Motor Co. CEO Jim Farley took his son on a three-day road trip from Silicon Valley to Las Vegas in Ford’s electric F-150 Lightning pickup truck. En route, Farley hobnobbed with Ford dealers and EV drivers and experienced the agony of slow-charging at congested charging centres. “Listening,” he explained, “is how we learn.”
Though just 3.5% of Ford’s revenue came from manufacturing electric vehicles in 2022, it poured more than US$2.1 billion into EV production last year and says it plans to invest US$50 billion by the end of 2026, with hopes of producing two million EVs a year. The Detroit automaker isn’t alone in the auto industry’s race to build BEVs (battery electric vehicles). Teasing out corporate pledges from their ledger books is key. Corporate Knights has been collecting data on major corporations’ green progress for two decades. Our Sustainable Economy Intelligence database tracks how much companies are funnelling into green capital expenditures (sustainable investment) and the percentage of revenues they earn from planet-friendly products and services (sustainable revenue).
So which of the legacy automakers is pulling ahead of the pack? Our EV hero this year is Sweden’s Volvo, which earned 20.2% of its revenue from sustainable products in 2022. That figure should keep ticking upward, now that it has announced it will be selling its last diesel car in early 2024 on the road to going all-in on EVs by 2030. In October, Volvo saw its battery electric vehicles (BEVs) jump 29% over the same period last year.
“Volvo will not sell a single car that is not full-electric after 2030, regardless of market,” the brand’s chief commercial officer, Björn Annwall, said in June. “No ifs, no buts.”
The companies in second and third place in the EV race (Germany’s Daimler and BMW) are still laps behind the Swedish car maker, with 12.3% and 11.6% in green revenue. Behind the scenes, BMW has been leading opposition to the EU’s 2035 zero-emissions CO2 standard that would phase out the sale of gas-powered cars.
While they may not be as outspoken as BMW, most car companies are still hiding behind industry groups that lobby against more aggressive emission regulations in both the U.S. and Europe. Meanwhile, Volvo Cars announced that it was leaving the European Automobile Manufacturers Association (ACEA) by the end of 2022 for that very reason: “We have concluded that Volvo Cars’ sustainability strategy and ambitions are not fully aligned with ACEA’s positioning.”
Angling to catch up is Volkswagen, which InfluenceMap notes is also “supporting more ambitious climate regulation than their competitors.” More than any other major car company in 2022, VW channelled an impressive 38.4% of investments (more than US$8.3 billion) into going green. The race is on.
