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President Joe Biden’s stated policy is to decarbonize the US light vehicle fleet by 2050 and improve on projected Obama-era standards for the years until then. The automobile as a socially constructed artifact is subject to social-cultural as well as technical constraints. The four main routes to decarbonization are reductions in horsepower, reductions in vehicle weight, technical efficiency improvements, and switching to zero-carbon-emission vehicles. The last two of these face technical constraints, and the first two are constrained by deeply entrenched social-cultural attitudes and practices. This paper offers an in-depth analysis of technical possibilities available to five major automakers (Ford, General Motors, Kia, BMW/Mini and Nissan) to progressively decarbonize their US light vehicle fleets by 2020 under these technical and social-cultural constraints. It utilizes fine-grained laboratory-standard vehicle test data on …