Young Research & Publishing Inc.

Investment Research Since 1978

Disclosure

  • About Us
    • Contributors
    • Archives
    • Dick Young’s Safe America
    • The Final Richard C. Young’s Intelligence Report
    • You’ve Read The Last Issue of Intelligence Report, Now What?
    • Dick Young’s Research Key: Anecdotal Evidence Gathering
    • Crisis at Vanguard
  • Investment Analysis
    • Bonds
    • Currencies and Gold
    • Dividend Investing
    • ETFs & Funds
    • Investment Strategy
    • Retirement Investing
    • Stocks
    • The Efficient Frontier
  • Investment Counsel
  • Dynamic Maximizers®
  • Retirement Compounders®
  • Free Email Signup

Do Electric Cars Threaten the Livelihood of 20 Million Auto Workers?

October 26, 2017 By Jeremy Jones, CFA

The FT reports on the threat that the electric car revolution poses to auto workers in the U.S. and Europe. Because electric cars have far fewer moving parts some researchers believe that far fewer people will be needed to make the vehicles and the parts that go into them.

The auto industry is fond of saying that if it were a country, it would be one of the world’s largest economies. Its figures show it supports around 7m jobs in the US alone and close to 13m in Europe.

Robots may have encroached on the assembly line already, but wait until the beguilingly deceptive electric car takes off. It might look like any other car from the outside but inside, it is more like a computer on wheels, a very different beast to the internal combustion engine vehicles we drive today. You can get a sense of the disparity from a recent report by some enterprising UBS financial analysts, who tore apart one of GM’s $37,000 Chevrolet Bolt electric cars to see what it cost to make. They found it was $4,600 cheaper to produce than expected and concluded that, with further cost falls likely, electric cars would probably disrupt the industry faster than widely understood.

The report did not dwell on jobs but for an auto worker, its findings are frightening. It said the Bolt had just 24 moving parts compared with 149 in a VW Golf, mainly because electric motors are so much simpler than combustion engines.

That suggests the car industry of the future will need far fewer people to make not just vehicles, but the components that go into them.

There is also the auto repair and service market. Combustion engines have spark plugs and oil that need changing. Electric motors do not require anything like the same amount of maintenance.

It is hard to know exactly what this will mean for the world’s car workers, not all of whom will switch easily from doing an oil change to rebooting a car computer.

Obviously a growing electric car industry should create new jobs in companies that make, say, batteries or software. But an awful lot of people may be left behind. If you talk to people who spend time looking at this, you hear alarming figures. One analyst I spoke to this year said he thought the reason some executives in older car companies were initially reluctant to embrace electric cars was because they understood the implications for their huge workforces. More than 420,000 auto jobs in Germany could be imperilled by a 2030 ban on combustion engine cars being debated there, a study commissioned by the country’s car industry said last week.

All this speaks to a problem about the shift to a greener energy system that is well understood by those who study it closely but yet to attract nearly enough attention from politicians: the need to retrain and possibly compensate workers at the face of rapid industrial change.

Read more here.

Share this:

  • Email
  • Twitter
  • Facebook

You Might Also Like:

  • Electric Cars Take the Lead in Norway Sales
  • Is China Subsidizing its Auto Industry to Electric Dominance?
  • Are the Chinese Jumping Ahead on Electric Cars?
  • Author
  • Recent Posts
Jeremy Jones, CFA
Jeremy Jones, CFA, CFP® is the Director of Research at Young Research & Publishing Inc., and the Chief Investment Officer at Richard C. Young & Co., Ltd. Richard C. Young & Co., Ltd. was ranked #5 in CNBC's 2021 Financial Advisor Top 100. Jeremy is also a contributing editor of youngresearch.com.
Latest posts by Jeremy Jones, CFA (see all)
  • Is It Time to Talk About the Defects of Index Funds Now? - August 12, 2022
  • Disney Catches Netflix in Streaming Wars - August 11, 2022
  • Prices for Electric Vehicles Going UP - August 10, 2022

Search Young Research

Most Popular

  • If the Phone Doesn’t Ring…It’s Me
  • Big Corporations Making Big Investments
  • DESANTIS RESISTS: Suspends Soros-Funded Destruction of America
  • Federal Reserve Governor Signals MORE Big Rate Hikes
  • SHOCK: Home Prices FALL in San Francisco as Market Dries Up
  • Your Retirement Life: Let the Slow and Steady Be Your Way of LIFE
  • The Key Ingredient to an $8 Million Estate Is This
  • The Power of a Compound Interest Table
  • Resilient Nordic Market Spawns Fast Growing Offshoot
  • Vanguard Wellesley (VWINX) vs. Wellington (VWELX): Which Fund is Best?

Don’t Miss

Default Risk Among the Many Concerns with Annuities

Risk and Reward: An Efficient Frontier

How to be a Billionaire: Proven Strategies from the Titans of Wealth

Could this Be the Vanguard GNMA Winning Edge?

Cryptocosm and Life After Google

Warning: Avoid Mutual Fund Year End Distributions

Is Gold a Good Long-term Investment?

How to Invest in Gold

Vanguard Wellington (VWELX): The Original Balanced Fund

What is the Best Gold ETF for Investing and Trading?

Procter & Gamble (PG) Stock: The Only True Dividend King

The Dividend King of the North

You’ll Love This if You’re Dreaming of an Active Retirement Life

RSS The Latest at Richardcyoung.com

  • Is Merrick Garland Taking the Blame to Protect Biden?
  • Our Commander-in-Chief Fumbles On
  • Buying A Boat: Who’s Looking Out for You?
  • DOJ Career Officers Disgusted by Garland’s Political Raid on Trump
  • Dick Young’s Investing in Fine Wine
  • If It Smells Fishy … ?
  • The Great Jon Rappoport on Kari Lake
  • How’s the Economy?
  • Your Survival Guy’s Favorite Number is 72: Here’s Why
  • DEMOCRATS PLAY DIRTY: Megynn Kelly Calls Bulls#$t on “Classified Documents” Story

About Us

  • About Young Research
  • Archives
  • Contributors

Our Partners

  • Richard C. Young & Co.
  • Richardcyoung.com

Copyright © 2022 | Terms & Conditions

loading Cancel
Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
Email check failed, please try again
Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.