ANN ARBOR, MI—Contrary to popular belief, electric vehicle production is not eliminating jobs in auto assembly plants. According to research conducted by the University of Michigan, U.S. factories producing EVs have required a larger workforce than traditional internal combustion engine facilities.
The recent study revealed that auto plants in the ramp-up stages of transitioning to full-scale EV production saw assembly jobs increase as much as 10 times. And, at one plant studied, the number of workers needed to make each vehicle has remained three times higher.
"There is a shortage of information out there about how the transition is shaping up," says Anna Stefanopoulou, Ph.D., a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Michigan who conducted the study. "What we're seeing, with the data that's available, is that the loss of employment predicted for EVs is not happening."
Previous estimates of what EV manufacturing would mean for autoworkers depicted a 30 percent to 40 percent reduction—a loss of 200,000 jobs or more. According to Stefanopoulou, much of that miscalculation stems from the basic difference between electric- and gas-powered cars.
Electric vehicles require roughly 100 fewer parts than their ICE counterparts, and their power train designs are far simpler. Transmissions, exhaust and cooling systems are not part of the EV equation, so the expectation has been that assembly jobs would be lost. But, the recent U-M findings show the opposite.
Stefanopoulou believes that several factors are likely contributing to higher numbers of assembly workers at EV plants, including:
• Investment in the development of new manufacturing technologies, which often requires more labor to improve.
• Higher vehicle complexity. Companies beginning to manufacture EVs usually start out making premium vehicles with the most advanced features and technologies.
• Some manufacturers have consolidated workers in a single, central location to lower costs from outsourcing.
Stefanopoulou and her colleagues studied three assembly plants that have transitioned from building only ICEs to EVs exclusively: General Motors, Orion Township, MI; Rivian Automotive Inc., Normal, IL (formerly a Mitsubishi facility); and Tesla Inc., Fremont, CA (formerly a GM-Toyota joint venture). They compiled two decades of data on the number of assembly workers at the three plants using public census data in the U.S., as well as production data from the Automotive News Research & Data Center.
While the research results clearly show that the number of assembly workers in the plants has increased in many cases, the jury is still out in terms of parts manufacturing jobs, which will largely depend on where battery cell manufacturing takes place.
Tesla's Fremont plant offers the longest stretch of EV production to study. Gabriel Ehrlich, Ph.D., an associate research scientist and director of U-M's Research Seminar in Quantitative Economics, believe there are important lessons to be gleaned from that facility’s data.
"The plant has been operating for 10 years now, and they've obviously been able to improve labor efficiency," notes Ehrlich. "But, the pace of improvement indicates that it can take up to 15 years for a plant to reach parity with its ICE predecessor. It's going to be a slow process; one that gives communities, companies and workers time to adjust."
