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Welcome to R&D Market Pulse, a weekly report on the top spenders in research and development.

I’m R&D Magazine Editor Laura Panjwani

GM Calls for National Electric Vehicle Initiative

General Motors has proposed the establishment of a National Zero Emissions Vehicle program to be adopted across all 50 states. The company wants to see framework introduced starting in 2021 to ensure the U.S. is a world leader in electric vehicle use and development.

GM called for the program to, among other things, establish Zero Emissions Vehicle requirements by credits each year, starting at 7 percent in 2021 and increasing 2 percent each year to 15 percent by 2025, then 25 percent by 2030.

GM representatives said they anticipate that a National Zero Emissions Vehicle program, as recommended, has the potential to place more than 7 million long-range EVs on the road by 2030, yielding a cumulative incremental reduction of 375 million tons of CO2 emissions between 2021 and 2030 over the existing Zero Emissions Vehicle program.

In a statement Mark Reuss, executive vice president and president, Global Product Group and Cadillac said

“We believe in a policy approach that better promotes U.S. innovation and starts a much-needed national discussion on electric vehicle development and deployment in this country. A National Zero Emissions Program will drive the scale and infrastructure investments needed to allow the U.S. to lead the way to a zero emissions future.”

Consumers Skeptical of Self-Driving Cars

A new Intel study reports that consumers are looking forward to a future where self-driving cars are a reality, even though they are skeptical of them now.

An Intel survey of U.S. consumers found that only 21 percent of Americans would swap their cars for self-driving cars today, but 63 percent expect such vehicles to be the norm in 50 years.

A previous report by Intel found that self-driving vehicles have the potential to save 585,000 lives from 2035 to 2045. But Intel’s new study found that consumers are conflicted about this promise. Over 40 percent of consumers say they don’t feel safe around autonomous vehicles currently, but at the same time, more than half of consumers look forward to the day when they won’t have to drive and expect to be using their car time for entertainment or work within 50 years.

Honda Expands Cognitive Robotics Research

Honda Research Institute has launched the “Curious Minded Machine” Research Collaboration to expand its cognitive robotics research.

During the three-year program, research teams from MIT, the University of Pennsylvania and University of Washington will collaborate with Honda Research Institute to explore the mechanisms of curiosity.

By developing different models of curiosity to understand how children “learn to learn” about the world, the Curious Minded Machine research collaboration aims to create new types of machines that can acquire an interest in learning and knowledge, the ability to learn and discover, and the ability to interact with others. This type of intelligent system could extract intention from interactions instead of mimicking without understanding the purpose.

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R&D Magazine follows the top 25 spenders in R&D as part of its R&D Market Pulse Index. 

To learn more about the R&D Market Pulse Index, view the full list of Top 25 companies, or read expert stock market insight from R&D Magazine contributing Editor Tim Studt, check out the Market Pulse page on rdmag.com.

I’m Laura Panjwani and thank you for watching R&D Market Pulse. Join us next week for more R&D business news.