Jamie L. LaReau reports:

Gen­er­al Motors “aspires” to have all of its glob­al new light-duty vehi­cles, includ­ing full-size pick­ups and SUVs, be zero emis­sion by 2035. It also tar­gets 2040 for its glob­al prod­ucts and plants to be car­bon neu­tral.

LaReau includ­ed the scare quotes because the announce­ment by GM on Thurs­day stops short of com­mit­ting to the ambi­tious goal. LaReau quotes Dane Park­er, GM’s chief sus­tain­abil­i­ty offi­cer, elbarot­ing on the word choice: ” ‘Aspire’ is a great word because it helps us work toward our vision,” said Park­er. “We’re tak­ing action to have our vehi­cles be zero emis­sions by 2035. This is going to take the effort of a lot of peo­ple and a lot of gov­ern­ments to get there. So we have a vision, we have a plan and we’re tak­ing action today to get there.”

A lot more details and reac­tion to the announce­ment are includ­ed in LaReau’s cov­er­age.

Anoth­er arti­cle by Andrew J. Hawkins digs into the big announce­ment, includ­ing a detectable amount of snark into the cov­er­age. The lede of the sto­ry reads as fol­lows: “Gen­er­al Motors, an auto­mo­tive com­pa­ny that sells hun­dreds of thou­sands of giant gas-guz­zling trucks and SUVs every year, says it will be car­bon neu­tral by 2040.”

Both arti­cles note that GM announced in Novem­ber a plan to invest $27 bil­lion to release 30 new elec­tric vehi­cles to the mar­ket by 2025.