Amid growing calls for companies to do their part to halt climate change, in September 2022 MITSUBISHI MOTORS announced its intention of achieving carbon neutrality by 2050. To that end, the Company began by envisioning a scenario for achieving carbon neutrality by 2050, and then considered the necessary responses and directions in which it should proceed. As a milestone on the road toward achieving carbon neutrality by 2050, in February 2023 we revised the Environmental Targets 2030. We raised our target for reducing CO2 emissions from business activities from 40% compared with FY2014 levels to 50% compared with FY2018 levels. We also set a new target of achieving a 100% ratio of electric vehicle sales by FY2035. Furthermore, we set “promoting carbon neutrality” as one of the three key challenges in Challenge 2025, the new mid-term business plan we unveiled in March 2023. In this way, we have positioned this as a theme to be addressed by the entire Company.
To achieve carbon neutrality in products, starting with our proprietary plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) and Kei-car commercial Electric vehicles, we will promote electrification while leveraging the technologies of the alliance to proactively introduce the electrified vehicles that best meet the energy situation, infrastructure development status, and customer needs of each country and region. In our business operations, we will strengthen energy-saving measures, pursue productivity improvement technologies, promote fuel conversion, and develop and adopt next-generation production technologies. Additionally, we will work to expand the use of renewable energy, in particular by installing solar power generation equipment in all major plants. To achieve carbon neutrality throughout the supply chain, we need to reduce CO2 emissions at the stage of producing raw materials and components, as well as in the transportation of products and other aspects of logistics. We will collaborate with our business partners to make CO2 emissions visible and reduce them. Looking to the product disposal stage, we will adopt more low-CO2 materials and incorporate product and material recycling considerations into our designs.