RockCreek CEO Afsaneh Beschloss interviews General Motors CEO Mary Barra at the Council of International Investors conference.

More than a century ago, Americans had a choice between cars that that ran on electricity or ones powered by gas. But in 1912, a gas-powered car cost $650, while electric cars cost more than $1,700. Over the next couple of decades, with Texas crude oil and cheap gasoline, electric vehicles mostly disappeared.

Mary Barra, the first woman to lead a Big-3 automaker, is trying to bend the arc of the auto industry back toward that moment, with one big difference: affordability. “The fact that we’re still working to get electric vehicles to be more affordable is a real challenge,” Barra told RockCreek CEO Afsaneh Beschloss during a fireside chat at the Council of Institutional Investors conference in Washington, DC.

But it is a challenge where she absolutely must – and plans to – succeed.

“A hundred years ago, making vehicles affordable changed the way people lived,” Barra said. “But it also came with safety incidents, congestion, and climate change. At General Motors, we believe climate change is real, and we look at it as our responsibility.”

So she is pushing the company toward goals tied directly to customer wellbeing: zero crashes, zero emissions, zero congestion, as she puts it. She has her sights set on the second goal – GM has committed to launching 30 new electric vehicles by 2025, with the goal of an all-electric fleet. 

But it’s not enough to build electric vehicles and hope the customers will come. “We’ve heard from customers that they don’t just want an EV; they want one that meets their lifestyle,” Barra told me. That means electric trucks, SUVs, and sports cars that perform as well – or better – than their gasoline-powered counterparts.” And it means developing a reliable ecosystem to keep them running. “Charging matters,” Barra said. “For most people, it’s their only automobile. It’s how they get to work. It needs to be reliable.”

What drives this third-generation Finnish American woman to blaze a trail to the C-suite, then forge a path toward a zero-emissions future? The auto industry, and GM specifically, are “in my blood,” she says. Her father was a die-maker at GM for nearly four decades. Barra worked as a co-op student, checking fender panels, and inspecting hoods, while studying electrical engineering at the General Motors Institute. GM sent her to Stanford to earn her MBA, and she worked in key areas of the business – from engineer to plant manager, head of human resources, and senior executive for global product development.

It seems like there was a grand plan, but Barra says she just followed her parents’ advice to work before you play. And above all: own you job. “If you work hard and distinguish yourself with your work, it will get noticed,” she said.

The proof will be in the results, and GM has a steep hill to climb. The company currently has about 10 percent of the electric vehicle market share, but Barra’s goal is to overtake Tesla, (which currently owns 60 percent of the market). If she succeeds, Barra will cement her place in the top ranks of global corporate leaders. Last year, Forbes called Barra the most important General Motors CEO since Alfred Sloan, the legendary executive who ran GM for 33 years.

In the midst of the Great Depression, Sloan wrote, “Industrial management must expand its horizons of responsibility. It must recognize that it can no longer confine its activities to the mere production of goods and services. It must consider the impact of its operation on the economy as a whole in relation to the social and economic welfare of the entire community.”

Barra’s vision of a zero-emissions future would improve the social and economic welfare of the US, and the world. But unlike Sloan’s cadre of “industrial statesmen” – a group that included only men – Barra is leading the electric transition by reminding people of why they love cars in the first place, starting with her own lifelong love of the automobile.

When asked to pick her favorite car – the 1960s Camaro that was her first love, the 1970s Pontiac Firebird she almost bought in college, or something that doesn’t even exist yet, Barra chose the diplomatic route with a nod toward the future: she is currently driving an electric Hummer.