The announcement is also in line with an agreement between Ford and several shareholder groups with green agendas, the biggest of which is the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility - an investor group representing almost 300 religious institutional investors and managing more than $100 billion.
The investment group has also announced they want GM to follow Ford's lead and set its own targets, reports Bloomberg.
Activists groups like Friends of the Earth call the new targets “unimpressive,” explaining that the 30% target only matches “existing regulatory requirements.” Remember, Ford is already mandated to lift its fleet average fuel economy levels to 35mpg by the same 2020 cutoff date in the U.S. and will face new 120g/km CO2 limits in Europe in coming years.