General Motors Co-Chief Executive Mary Barra has promised investors that the Detroit-based auto conglomerate will start getting profit by selling electric vehicles by 2021.

The main obstacle on the way of GM’s officials’ plan is that for the moment there is no company in the world that would make profit off selling electric cars. Even the pioneer and the biggest, most well-known company of the field Tesla is working with $1 billion-dollar hole being burnt in the company’s budget.

The plan is to build up profit by rolling new battery technology, low-cost and easy-to-construct design of the vehicles and big production volume, that will be concentrated in China.

GM’s plan is looking very ambitious even for the company of this size and reputation as to get profits they will have to cover two markets – traditional cars, such as trucks and sport vehicles for North American buyers and the rest of the world which is slowly going to trade petroleum engines for electrical ones.

Also, the electric cars market is mostly driven by the governmental regulations and not by the users’ demands, so some called the statement to be quite bald.

According to Reuters the strategy of cutting costs is quite simple and was already implemented by the company – it is cutting the amount of cobalt in the engines. Cobalt is the priciest ‘ingredient’ in the cars’ engines.

According to the source GM are hoping to drop around 30% of the value on the cost of the batteries alone.

There are also other engine-related systems that are undergoing changes, e.g. cooling system for the batteries, more efficient packaging of the batteries and others.

Although the demands for electric cars is still low there is much hope for the industry as the most populated country in the world – China is planning to rapidly reduce the number of regular vehicles on their roads in hopes to stop and try to reverse the horrible pollution that is now threatening the country’s population.