Okay. Hi, everybody. We're gonna try to wake you up or preempt your food coma right now. I really am excited with this session and have the privilege of moderating Kristen Siemen, Vice President and Chief Sustainability Officer of General Motors. Then to Kristen's left, we have Alejandro Zamorano, who is the Head of Transportation at Calvert Research and Management, Morgan Stanley Investment Management. We're gonna have a discussion about the important topic of decarbonizing the automotive value chain, the automotive business model, and some of the challenges and opportunities that Kristen and General Motors company has facing them through this transition. Just a few remarks from me.
I've been at Morgan Stanley for almost three decades, and I feel more and more of my time I'm spent looking back at the history of the auto industry from the period, for example, from 1908 to 1913 when the Model T was introduced, when the moving assembly line was introduced, when Durant and the founders of General Motors were glomerating these businesses and coming up with their company over 100 years ago. We really are witnessing history again, where the topic of energy transition in autos and the enabling technologies in the supply chain, this is involving... I mean, we used to say hundreds of billions. That got out of style. We used to say trillions. I mean, this is like decatrillions.
I mean, this is tens of trillions of investment and transfer of wealth over decades 'cause this is not gonna be a quick win. I spend a lot of time thinking about the trade-offs, okay? The battery supply chain, for example. We all want EVs, right? Everyone wants an EV, that's great. EVs will help save the world. All right. Well, hold on a second. Where does your EV come from? Where are those materials coming from? How are those materials sourced? Because there's a couple inconvenient truths about the battery supply chain, the EV battery supply chain specifically, which involve geopolitics. Up to 90% of the upstream battery supply chain is refined and processed in China. Okay. Good on China. That's fine.
They had an industrial policy to skate to where the puck was going and to really be in a dominant position there. If we want a quick energy transition in the West, are we gonna do that while flipping our supply chain to economic rivals and have no control over our own economic destiny? The Department of Energy doesn't think so. The Department of Defense also doesn't think so, doesn't want to do this. Aside from the geopolitical entanglement of the supply chain, we have the ESG and emission inconvenient truths of the supply chain.
I was told, and it's been confirmed by many automakers, Kristen, if I'm wrong, tell me, that in a nickel-based cathode battery, that you'd have to drive a Tesla on solar and wind power for five years just to offset the coal emissions from refining the grade two pig iron in Indonesia to the grade one nickel that then goes in the nickel-based battery. So we have to. As we get greater transparency on the supply chain on the batteries, not just for emissions, but water usage, land usage, tribal land rights, child labor issues. Anyone. If you study the cobalt supply chain in the DRC, it's heartbreaking. You know? Where, you know, where'd your blood battery come from?
The challenge is to try to solve a major ESG problem and an energy transition problem without creating new challenges faster than we're solving them. That's what we're spending a lot of time looking at within the auto industry and trying to pick opportunities and risks along the value chain all the way upstream, working with our partners in mining and refining and chemicals and cap goods and semiconductors and batteries all the way downstream to electric utilities and recycling and charging infrastructure. With that, Alejandro, I want to pass it on to you to kind of describe a little bit about what your mission is.
Yep.
On the investment management side and how you're spending your time. Then we're going to go to Kristen and open it up for Q&A.
Sure. I think you, your introduction was great. Yeah, we're spending a lot of time trying to assess the financial materiality of unintended consequences of the transition. We're trying to see in the long term how those are gonna play out. The IRA, in fact, is quite helpful for us, for my analysis, because it's making that supply chain quite transparent. It's making the companies disclose information that they wouldn't disclose otherwise to the public. So it's giving us a lot of visibility on how that supply chain cluster is being built.
We still need to understand in the long term how the companies are going to deal with declining motorization rates globally, deal with impact to communities, as you said, of mining of some of the metals in North America, in the U.S., or in FTA countries that have an FTA with an FTA with the U.S. We want to understand how the business is going to look in 10 years, if it's going to be a company that is twice the size that it is today, that is just selling, you know, everything that is selling electric is additional to what it sells today.
It's going to be a company that is selling of the same size, that is just selling dual- drivetrain technology, and how that's gonna impact the manufacturing footprint on the existing assets. Will the company still have 90,000 employees in the U.S. in 2035? Will the company still have 12 manufacturing plants in the U.S. in 2035 when the, you know, when the transition continues to happen? We look at those because, you know, at this point, we believe that we are at a stage of execution of an environmental strategy for the car companies. Looking at the supply chain will give us a lot of visibility on that, and at the targets, and how the models are performing now that they're starting to come out of the, of the manufacturing facilities.
If we're building this cluster where it doesn't exist, we need to understand what the social issues are going to be. We're spending a lot of time looking at how companies' governance, I guess, strategies are changing as a result, how the boards are changing as a result, how compensation is changing as a result to ensure that this cluster that is in the process of being built here in North America actually doesn't face the issues that we have with the energy industry or the mining industry today.
Mm.
We don't wanna be in 10 years, in 20 years where we are today in the extraction of natural resources. That's kind of like the approach we're taking. In the end, we care about what could erode value or create value for the business in the long term. That's our challenge. We have to quantify things that are pretty unquantifiable. We have to then try to understand how that's gonna make the company stronger, and then we have to essentially rank these companies to see which ones are better poised for this transition. That's what we're doing at Calvert, and that's, you know, the piece of I.T. that we provide to the larger investment management team at Morgan Stanley in understanding how this transition is being carried out.
Thanks, Alejandro.
Yeah.
All right, Kristen, tell us, some of the key messages for General Motors' sustainability strategy and energy transition and how it might differentiate from some of your competitors.
Sure. I mean, we've made some big, bold goals like a lot of companies, right? That are planning to be carbon neutral in our products and operations by 2040. Plan to eliminate tailpipe emissions from new light-duty U.S. vehicles by 2035. We've made some big announcements in the past year over our renewable energy strategy. Our original strategy we had set back in 2015 was to be 100% renewable by 2050. We saw that we could actually accelerate that based on a lot of the agreements we had made, and we bumped it up to 2035. Last year we actually said, "You know what? We can be there in the U.S. by 2025." We set a goal to...
We've actually beat that one by 25 years in the U.S. That was a big accomplishment for us. A lot of other initiatives in place, but I think at the core, at GM, our sustainability strategy is fully ingrained with our business strategy. They're one and the same. It's doing things to ensure that the company is planning for value, planning for growth, focused on the future. You know, things like energy efficiency, water efficiency, waste elimination, those aren't just good for the environment, they're very good for the business. We continue to focus on how we weave those strategies in and really make sure that the company is resilient and looking at things like sustainable supply chain, et cetera. They're really weaved together throughout the company.
What I like about your background is you've been at GM for 29 years.
Yep.
27 of those years in product development.
Correct.
You told me that when Mary called you to say, "We want you to be CFO.
Well, it wasn't Mary who called me, but yes.
When you got the call-
Yeah
To be CFO at GM, your response was, "Why me?
Exactly.
I like that you bring to this, to the role, the science and the product development background to be able to call BS on something that just doesn't smell right, and just see the challenges and be open and honest and realistic about them.
Yeah.
My question for you is, how the hell did you achieve the carbon neutrality 25 years earlier?
At the renewable energy one is a great example.
Mm-hmm
O f setting a goal. It was the renewable energy commitment that we achieved early. You know, when we first set some of these goals, it's kind of a, okay, we can see a path to get there, but we're not exactly sure, you know, what the steps are. No different than engineering a product, and we set, you know, goals on, you know, price and cost and range and everything else. You see a path, but it's not identical, right, of each individual step.
The more we did, and by getting in early, working with utilities and projects from a solar and wind standpoint, we really found that we were able to not only find, projects that were good financially, but, that were in the communities where we were building and really working together. We participate in, founding members of CEBA, the Clean Energy Buyers Alliance.
Mm-hmm.
We have a four-pillar strategy around renewable energy. The first is energy efficiency, so everything we can save and reduce is good for the bottom line. The second is around sourcing renewables and finding a way to add additionality and really grow that market of decarbonizing. The third is around resiliency and things like, you know, backup storage of things like GM Energy and things we're doing there. The fourth is around policy. As we look at that four-pillar strategy and really put initiatives across the board, it's been successful.
I'd love to know, as you approach the kind of palette of things that GM can do to continually improve efficiency and emissions and sustainability, what were in addition to renewable energy, what were some of the areas of lower hanging fruits, and what are some of the things that are just really, like, the very high, hard to reach fruit that frankly, you know, maybe you need to work with policymakers on achieving?
Yeah, I mean, if you look at our... I mean, if you take our carbon footprint as an example, right. Less than 2% of our carbon footprint is Scope 1 and 2. Renewables, you know, are attacking a very small piece of our carbon footprint. The rest is Scope 3, which is the same for most companies. For us, 75% is the customer usage of our vehicles. The next biggest... obviously our transition to EVs will take care of that, assuming the grid is decarbonized, and we get to, you know, charging with green energy 100% of the time. The next biggest piece is our supply chain, which is around 18%. As we look at those, you know, obviously the transition to EVs, as I said, is that's our business strategy.
It's a growth strategy. It's a, it's a future of where the industry is heading. On the supply chain, we're working very closely with our suppliers. Last year, we issued. Actually, in 2021, we issued a supplier pledge, an ESG pledge, where we've asked our suppliers to also sign up for their own both carbon neutral goals as well as a minimum score on EcoVadis. A way for us to ensure that we're getting at things like labor relations, you know, forced labor, child labor, et cetera, throughout the supply chain as well. So far we've had over 70% of our tier ones has APV has signed on. What we're seeing, which is great, is they're now doing the same thing with their suppliers.
It's, it's really working as we had hoped and planned, that it's going down through the supply chain to tier twos, tier threes, tier fours to ensure that these things are progressing the way we want them to progress. That, you know, we are helping each other with how to do renewable energy agreements, you know, looking at ways to make the supply chain more sustainable, more resilient, more reliable. You know, when you ask what's the toughest, obviously the transition is the biggest piece, in the grid. Really getting to green energy across the board is gonna be tough. But it's those two categories that I'd say we have the most focus on.
Just one more from me, and I'll pass to Alejandro. On the supply chain side, we were talking before the panel that if we're going to onshore battery supply chain, and we're gonna do the upstream stuff, extraction, refining, processing, we're gonna have to do it very differently from the way it's done out east, in the Far East. What are some of the technologies that GM's investing in right now to help not just accelerate onshoring, but to make sure it's done in a way that is equitable and, you know, done in a more renewable way?
Yeah. I mean, I think if you look at the agreements we've made, and as we talked before, we have all of the raw materials lined up for... to meet our volume goals for 2025, and now we're working on 2026-2030, and we're well on our way to that. It's really looking at how do we bring as much, you know, into North America as possible, and how do we ensure that it's done in a, again, a very sustainable way. You know, there's companies like Controlled Thermal Resources out in the Salton Sea in California that are able to extract lithium in, you know, a less carbon intensive way.
Finding solutions like that, finding companies that have commitments and goals, whether it be, you know, POSCO, the joint venture in Canada around cathode active materials or some of the things we've even done all the way down to, you know, Lithium Americas, which is extracting on their own as well. Trying to find the right partnerships with companies that have the same goals, beliefs, and objectives that we do, I think is really the key to the ultimate solutions. You know, GM's very committed to ensure that we're part of that success. You know, we talked kind of the make versus buy earlier as well. It's finding, you know, those critical materials and ensuring...
We learned a lot through the last few years of supply chains and where we have to be, you know, strategically engaged at each step of the process.
Alejandro.
I'll stay with the topic then. Something that we've observed at Calvert is that especially the Japanese and Korean OEMs are very comfortable being fully vertically integrated. They've been like that for a while. The US OEMs, you know, they basically ended that structure and, you know, created the tier system of suppliers. With the electrification change, looks like we're going back to the vertical integration all the way to the metal in the mine. My question is, when you're assessing, you brought up the Lithium Americas example. When assessing that project, you know, lithium ore versus lithium brine, what ESG factors come into that? Is it purely a financial decision, or is it?
Are you taking into account the emerging risks, around local communities, water usage, which could, in the end, if we were to talk about financial materiality, erode brand value?
Right. Yeah, I it's definitely all in. In fact, one of the things I do at the company is run what we call an office of sustainability, and it's got representatives, senior leader level representatives from across all of the various functions, everything from purchasing and supply chain to marketing, manufacturing, et cetera, so that we can come together and talk through these major initiatives. When we're looking at a company, when we're looking at a partnership or, you know, a new agreement or initiative to sign on to, we're all evaluating it for our functions and to ensure that those things aren't being ignored. You know, as far as where we engage and where we don't, when you talk about the vertical integration. In reality, our propulsion systems were very vertically integrated, you know, throughout the company for years.
If we look at electrifying, you know, the propulsion system, it's very consistent with what we've done traditionally. Finding those things where we believe either need a competitive advantage to, you know, be engaged earlier in the supply chain or where, you know, maybe there's a supply risk, et cetera. All of that is factored in, including all the ESG aspects.
We were doing some analysis recently, and roughly 80% of the EV capacity on the passenger vehicle side outside of China is coming from five cell makers that are working with OEMs globally. We see a very strong concentration there, and we see potential emerging risks from our ESG perspective. I don't know if Adam has views on the fundamental side. Have you thought about that at GM? I know you're working with LG and Samsung, and Micro, as I believe. Have you thought about it? How would we approach that risk?
I mean, I think the LG partnership is a great example. Is, you know, it's a 50/50 joint venture on the cell manufacturing. I mean, we have one plant producing already in the U.S. The second one is about to come on board, third one in construction, and the fourth one, you know, announced the fourth one with a new partner. You know, GM is very knowledgeable and has a lot of expertise in the manufacturing, the quality aspects. Take that and partner it with the chemistry that LG has. It's been a very successful joint venture. As well as, you know, we continue. I think a lot of people forget, you talked about, you know, looking back in the industry. You know, GM's been doing electric vehicles for over 25 years, right?
There's still engineers that worked on those early chemistries and early vehicles that are working on it today and advancing. Every day, there's new and more innovations. We just built a new innovation center on our tech center around battery chemistry and cell development. That innovation and those new technologies are gonna continue to happen every day in advance. I think it's finding the right partners for the right reasons and then also continuing to do our own development as well.
The other one, if I may, Adam, I don't know, I don't wanna take your time. We are all very excited with the IRA. There's an expected boom in construction. You know, labor markets are gonna be doing relatively well. We're starting to think about once this boom passes, talking about 2035, when you're, you know, already selling over 1 million EVs, how do you think about kind of to my initial point, the size of the business? What's going to happen to those facilities that cannot be retooled, that has to be shut down? What's going to happen to those communities in those places where you've had a footprint for 100 years? Have you thought about that? Do you take into account that when you design these long-term strategies?
Very much so. I mean, I think our track record to date shows that we do care, right? I mean, we continue to transform our facilities where we are today. Things like Spring Hill, Orion Assembly, Factory Zero in Detroit-Hamtramck. Even our parts facilities that we're making components for some of our ICE engines, you know, are now transitioning to build electric drive units. Very much a commitment to those communities where we live and work. It's very important to us. I think we'll continue to evaluate, you know, as we go forward and keep making those, you know, important and strategic decisions of where it makes the most sense. Very committed to being localized. Yeah.
Wanted to give the audience a chance to ask any questions of Kristen. Anybody? Right here. Just wanna make sure people heard that, question on autonomous driving and, how that factors into your mission.
Yeah. I mean, are you asking the question in regards to the carbon footprint aspect of autonomous driving or-
Yeah.
Yeah. I mean, you know, certainly, if you drive a vehicle. I'll go back to my engineering days here now. If you drive a vehicle on cruise control, you're gonna get the most efficient, you know, performance of the vehicle. From a range perspective and that with autonomous driving, it's certainly an advantage from that standpoint. You know, if you look at the bigger ESG aspect and the social piece of what autonomous driving does for communities and offers that freedom, our autonomous vehicles are EV vehicles, it plays directly into our overall strategy and business strategy.
Again, as we can transition more, you know, of the grid from a decarbonizing the grid, be able to charge those with green energies, it's a zero emissions game that plays right into our overall business strategy.
Can I add to that, just from a research lens? Your question involves a lot of trade-offs. I mean, 120 people dying every day in this country in traffic fatalities and growing. 15 times that of serious incapacitating injuries. 3,000 deaths globally per day in traffic fatalities, so the life-saving, injury-saving aspect is huge. Anyone in this room who's been affected by automobile tragedy, statistically there's a number of you, know what I'm talking about. If you're able to match supply and demand of transportation as well, through autonomous network, there's hope that you can increase utilization of the car park, which is globally underutilized at only 4%, and we can maybe produce less cars, and there's other ways for GM to make money. Instead of just making cars, you can have more recurring revenue.
Then there's the unintended consequence that Elon talked about fairly recently, and I agree with, which is if autonomy takes the price per mile traveled down from $1 a mile to $0.10 a mile or some imaginably, unimaginably low number, we tend to consume more of it. Then you kind of have these dystopian kind of views of our infrastructure not being ready for just people sitting in traffic jams, just humming away, just, you know, consuming some, I don't know, living in a metaverse on your way to your commute that you otherwise would have taken or something. This we're gonna have to see how this goes. I'm very hopeful, and our team at Morgan Stanley working with our colleagues, we're very optimistic on autonomous technology, but we are trying to push.
The more we learn, the more we realize this is maybe the hardest thing humanity's ever tried to problem humanity's ever tried to solve. The regulatory aspect is also incredibly complex. There's some stepping stones along the way. GM's Super Cruise technology and other technologies are saving lives today.
For sure. I mean, absolutely. I mean, you could go through all the statistics of, you know, how much safer you are in a vehicle with those systems, particularly Super Cruise, you know, which is very gated on safety. Ultimately, you know, Ultra Cruise, which is coming, which opens it up to much more roads as well. You know, the thing that autonomous also provides is, you know, there's less accidents, so now there's, you know, less congestion on the road. You know, you figure you've got less, you know, traffic incidents where you need police or ambulance or that type of thing coming to the scene. All of that playing together, I think, ultimately frees up a lot of things to happen and really advance things.
The safety aspects are tremendous and also the freedom again. You know, my parents are aging.
Mm-hmm
Y ou know, They're not as quick as they were, you know, 10, 15, 20 years ago. To think of the freedom of what it will continue to give them or people with disabilities.
Yeah
T hat, you know, now can have access to transportation that didn't have access. We continue to follow on, you know, everything GM has always done has been gated by safety. I mean, I kind of laugh at going back in my engineering days. You know, we were driving around our tech center, or I'm sorry, our proving grounds, you know, 15+ years ago autonomously. It's easy when you know exactly what route you're on and what's around you. To think of where we've come since then, you know, it's really amazing, both the technology-
Yeah
A nd the capability.
While the audience thinks of your next great questions, and there's a couple here. Well, I don't even have to ask. You and then over here. Yes, please.
Previous panel was talking about how in Europe, I think the word they used was bloodbath, thanks, to describe, you know, the coming competition with Chinese automakers. I know in the U.S., you know, historically, we've had some protections. I mean, there's some European brands I never even saw on a U.S. road until I went outside the country. You know, if that is the reality, you know, what is a company like GM doing to try to, I guess, you know, tackle that or deal with that potential threat?
Yeah. I mean, I think at the end of the day, it's great products, it's great services, it's, you know, safety record, and it's who we are as a company. You know, I think we will continue to win based on the products and what's available. You know, there's very few full-scale automotive companies out there that cover all segments and price points. We, you know, have a portfolio. We've announced a number of EVs across that range, as well as, you know, other branches that are new to GM, which signify growth and value and opportunity, things like GM Energy. You know, energy storage services, backup power generation.
You know, our BrightDrop, which is, you know, delivery services, both from a vehicle van level perspective as well as small delivery carts for kind of that last mile. All of those are new businesses that, you know, didn't exist before and so provide more opportunities for us in the future.
I think I heard that point as well earlier today, and something that wasn't brought up when that point came was that most of the Western new OEMs have been working in China via JVs.
Yeah
F or decades. If somebody knows that the competition that is coming are the Western OEMs.
Very true.
They essentially helped build that industry there for decades. I think it was a little bit Armageddon-ish in my view, how it was proposed. There's a lot of know-how from the Western OEMs on how cars are made in China, what cars are made, and what are the advantages and bringing around.
No, I completely agree.
What I would say, I mean, you got to make room. I mean, we saw this in the 1970s after the oil crisis. People were like, "No one's going to buy a Japanese car." Okay, you saw how that turned out. The 1980s and 1990s, "No one's going to buy a Korean car." Okay, they're making some really good cars. No one's gonna buy a Chinese car. No, no, you're gonna. These are really good cars. They're very well made. Companies like GM help the local players make beautifully designed and close the door. It's like, "Ooh, I'm cocooned now." Like, nice cars, and they're gonna come. What was described as a bloodbath, I would just say it's just another day, another day in the office for General Motors, probably. Yeah.
Question up here.
On the fully autonomous vehicles, you know, first question is how far away do you think we are in urban dense areas for fully autonomous vehicle? Because it's not like it's something you can use 80-20 rule because there's a safety issue. You need to get as close to 100%, right? There's no margin of error. The second, how do you think the competition from, like, Apple or tech companies just even from attracting talent? The third is, do you think this is a sector that's like a networking effect that, you know, the safer the algorithm, the more people use, the more data it gets, that winner takes all market type of business? Is it expected to be like that?
Let me try and remember. The first question around the safety of autonomous in an urban area. I mean, I think you can see where we're at with our partners at Cruise, and we're, you know, currently offering, driverless taxis that you can hail yourself in San Francisco.
Yeah. Has anyone been in one of these, by the way, in San Francisco?
I have. Amazing.
It was what?
Amazing.
Thank you.
No, I want to make sure.
I wanted to make sure everyone heard that word.
Yeah, no, it's pretty cool.
It's incredible.
Yeah.
You know, there's frankly no more complex area to drive than San Francisco. You know, now it's rolling out to other cities as well. You know, again, gated on safety and the readiness for the technology. I think San Francisco and Cruise have proved what the technology can do and do it safely. Your second question was around competition from... You know, the automotive industry is not an easy industry. Building and manufacturing a vehicle, if you've never been in an assembly plant, is extremely complex. That takes years of optimization, understanding of quality and safety and all the aspects. I truly believe that, you know, we have a huge competitive advantage there based on what we've done, what we know, and we'll continue to see that apply across the board, so.
Then your third question was?
Fragmentation.
Like that service
Like at a local level, one winner take all.
Oh.
network effect on data.
I don't know.
TBD.
Yeah. I mean, yes, TBD, I guess would be the best way to say that. I mean, we wanna make sure that we protect and we own the customer experience and, you know, how the vehicle drives, how it behaves. We talked about make versus buy earlier in the day. You know, things like our autonomous system, that's ours, right? Our ADAS system, Super Cruise, Ultra Cruise, that's developed and designed in-house.
Our view, our take on that answer is it's. We think it's winner take most at a localized level, not unlike an electric utility or an airline that has a local hub. You're not gonna have every single airline equally represented in every city. They'll lend themselves to maybe natural monopolies or natural oligopolies over time based on a lot of factors, including geopolitics and then network effect and first mover advantage as well. We have about 10 minutes left, and I know there's a lot of more questions from you, but I'm gonna ask the Wall Street question. How do you make money doing this?
I mean, it does strike me that beyond the abilities and the install base and invested capital and human capital that GM has and has brought to bear in energy transition and will continue to do, A critic could say, "Boy, this is an incredibly easy way to go out of business, trying to get into mining and into technologies that are not fully developed, competing against players that might have superior scale and cost to you right now." How do you reconcile those, the economic, the economic sustainability point with the environmental sustainability point?
Yeah. I mean, well, I think that's what I said at the beginning, right? Our, our sustainability strategy is part of our business strategy, and they play together. I mean, we're in business to make money, clearly. Finding those supply agreements that make sense for the future, it's continuing. You know, GM is based, it's a technology-based company that's been innovating for well over 100 years. We continue to innovate and drop. You know, our battery technology is using less and less materials more efficiently, providing more range, you know, at lower cost. We will continue to do that and evolve that over, you know, the next generation of Ultium platform, et cetera. You know, and I think we know and have shown, we know how to scale technologies.
Whether it's things like ADAS that start, you know, in a smaller segment of the, you know, the car park and it'll continue to, you know, portray across the rest of the vehicles. You know, we've done it. We'll continue to find those opportunities and make sure that they're weaved together.
I actually, can I ask really quickly a follow-up on that? When looking out the way down to 2035 and looking at the emission goals that you have in the company and taking the position that in 2035, carbon is gonna have a cost, right? We're talking about I think it's 150 million tons of CO2 that's gonna be the Scope 1, 2, and 3 for the whole company. If we assume $50 per ton, that's $10.5 billion if you were to abate it. Is the company developing a strategy for what's gonna happen once we get to the point, once we reduce to half our CO2 footprint?
Yeah. I mean, our first prioritization is on eliminating it. Eliminating as much as we can. We talked about, you know, energy efficiency projects and all the work we're doing there. The transition to renewables, as well as, you know, the grid itself is gonna decarbonize over time also, right? I mean, we're doing everything we can from our small piece, but the rest of the transition is happening as well. When you talk about what's left, I mean, really the big technologies that we're still looking for solutions for are heating and cooling our facilities and paint ovens, you know, are kind of the ones that are left. In our supply chain, we continue to work with them on, you know, renewable energy for their facilities.
Things like, you know, signing up with First Movers Coalition for steel, aluminum, and cement and concrete to really drive the demand in the market for green options there as well. You know, I think there's a lot that's gonna happen. We talked about how quickly we were able to accelerate our renewable energy objective, and I think we're gonna see that happen in other segments as well as this transition happens, frankly, faster than any of us anticipated.
Do you think recycling, battery recycling is gonna be a big chunk of that?
Absolutely. I mean, we've already got, you know. We've recycled batteries to date on things like the Bolt and the Volt, and we have agreements in place with companies like Lithion to take the raw materials of, you know, the batteries, even in the manufacturing process, and put them back in. Our view of the recyclability thing is really to look at it from the circular economy standpoint. Even things like plastics. I mean, we talk a lot about batteries, but plastics is another one where you can add, you know, a small percentage of almost, I hate to say anything, but it is almost anything to the plastic materials that we use in the vehicles and, you know, it's using recycled content.
What's important is what can we do with at the end of it, at the end of life, and making sure that we have options there. Sometimes what you add isn't easy to separate at the end. We're really looking at all of our design practices of how do we no longer just, you know, build from, you know, build design for assembly, design for, serviceability, but how do we design in with a circularity view in mind so that it is recyclable or, you know, that total picture and everything from how much water something uses to how do we make sure that the sealant we're using is, you know, easily removed to be able to separate the materials. It's really holistic, you know, within the company.
Question here. Second row.
Thank you. Given the criticality of EV charging infrastructure and the disparate approaches to passenger light-duty EV charging and medium and heavy-duty charging, how does all of that fit into GM's electrification strategy and business model?
Yeah. I mean, its charging infrastructure is extremely important and, you know, it's not something that we'll be able to solve by ourselves. We've made a lot of commitments and doing a lot, you know, to help the transition. One is, you know, we built a partnership with Pilot Flying J to build out the infrastructure across the major corridors in the U.S. with DC fast chargers. We have a commitment that we've made with our dealerships. There's, you know, over 90% of the U.S. population is no more than 10 miles from a GM dealership. We've committed to, you know, providing our dealerships with 40,000 charging stations for them to decide in their community where they should be. You know, that may be at the, you know, community center.
I would say as a mom of three boys, I say it should be at the soccer field where, you know, or the baseball fields we're waiting for practice to end. Really to, you know, for people to be able to see that it's available in their community and that they can live within this EV future. Again, maybe I'm a, you know, eternal optimist, but I do believe that supply and demand drives a lot and innovation continues to happen. I think the charging infrastructure is gonna happen pretty quickly.
I would just add, it'll affect how the cars are designed. I think of the movie Wall Street, Michael Douglas out east on the beach in the Hamptons with his briefcase phone or whatever, the big brick. I see batteries today where the battery weighs as much as a car, as like a Honda Civic. I really think we'll look back at today's EV batteries and EVs and be like, "How stupid was that? Why, why was the battery that big?" 'cause there was no place to charge and range anxiety was deterministic whether you sold the vehicle or not. I think high speed DC fast charging combined with charging station ubiquity, will mean that we can get away with.
I mean, the vast majority of vehicles could be sub 50 kilowatt hours. You'll have a whole range of micro vehicles and mega city vehicles at 30 kilowatt hour batteries that are just so efficiently used and charged really fast because, you know.
I understand.
To Kris' point, this is gonna take some time, but it will get there.
Most people don't drive that far, you know. Maybe once a year that people really drive where they would need the full range of what we're, you know. It's an expectation and a customer, you know, desire right now today. You know, I always say that either you can use the analogy that there wasn't a gas station on every corner when, you know, the automobile started. When we first got cell phones, you know, you behave differently. You charge when charging is available. You don't necessarily go and drain it completely and then fill it up to a full charge.
We have time for one more. Just wrap us up over here.
So, um-
Yeah.
Can I come off?
You can speak up.
Can I come off mute? I've been helpful, I know the transition, you know, including green bonds, and congrats for that. I'm wondering, what else can the financial community do to help multinationals like GM accelerate their transition from a finance perspective, perhaps incentives and other... Cause I know the spread on green bonds isn't that much wider than the other bonds. Is there more that can be done?
Yeah, not my area of expertise.
I see you, Shane. Did you wanna-
You wanna comment?
Take a follow-up?
I would say that for us.
I can tell you just from the Department of Energy and the Loan Programs Office, they were kinda radio silent. They weren't giving out anything for the last 10 years, that is my contacts in D.C. and Mr. Berg's contacts, that is changing. This is being, like, amped up to a level of anxiety that I didn't think I'd see in my professional career, if not my lifetime. Stay tuned. With that, Kristen, Alejandro, I wanna thank you for your time, and thanks for your questions.
Thank you.
That concludes this session. Thank you.
Thank you. Thanks.
Thank you very much.
Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate it.