New study expects at least 215,000 jobs to be wiped out in the German auto industry by 2030

[ajdelange]

Umm, I don't think it works that way? No one "installs a transistor" lol

I get your point, that the jobs will just shift from the old industry to the new. But EVs require vastly fewer parts ...

Actually they have myriad more but most of them, like the transistors i mentioned, are installed by machines onto PC boards, The boards themselves or the higher level assemblies they are installed in are installed into the car by humans. But human labor is required to load the reels of transistors, capacitors, resistors and chips into the part placement machines etc. Overall fewer man hours are required but I'd still like to know if the offset is included in the numbers in the articles.

 

[DarinCT]

Wow, every post so far misses the points. According to yous, that 40 year old with 15 years in a trade, a mortgage, and two kids will just have to get trained in a new profession and start competing with his juniors because his industry is getting the wrecking ball. "Sucks to be your making buggy whips but this is the new thing so go polish that resume."

Even in a magical world where there were 200K available jobs 200K for retrained automotive and also in this magical world where retraining 200K didn't result in massive costs, there will be lost income, list businesses, lost contracts, mental health issues, etc. Assuming the research was legit, there's now a number that all the interested stakeholders can talk about.

Whether are you are pro-union or not (I'm not), those workers will be given as little as possible because the companies don't want to pay, the government doesn't want to swallow that pill, and the unions will not succeed in a magical(sic) way.

It took Pittsburgh a lot of concerted effort and planning and money to be the thriving place today. Flint got fucked and unless we give a shit, these workers will too. Bunch of self-righteous privileged yahoos...

 

[Crissa]

Umm, I don't think it works that way? No one "installs a transistor" lol

Of course they do. What do you think is on circuit boards? Not everything is an IC, and even so, there's not much difference between a single transistor and an IC except thermal and voltage ranges.

-Crissa

 

[Crissa]

...If you've been going 15 years in a trade, you won't be replaced in the shift from ICE to electric.

It's those guys not in a trade that are in trouble.

-Crissa

 

[ReddykwRun]

60 or so years ago there was a magazine whose name escapes me. It had a cartoon every month titled "through history with J. Wellsley Smith". The recurring character appeared at different historical periods and always managed to put his foot in his mouth in some way. The one I remember the best shows him making presentation to the management of the Acme Barrel Company. His chart shows a steep rise in future demand and the caption is "Just look at the future! In 2020, for crackers alone...........

 

[ReddykwRun]

There used to be an Enlisted Rating in the U.S. Navy as Aviation Carpenter. I think Orville & Wilber Wright trained a few. In my career in aviation we have seen the move away from sheet metal to composites. Times change and tools and careers must adapt. How many typewriter repairman do you know or ask your neighborhood Brontosaurus or T Rex "How's the weather today?"

 

[firsttruck]

I don't think anyone is suggesting "OH NOES, WE MUST STOP TEH EVEES" to save jobs.

There are people and organizations that do exactly that. Most do not really care about jobs (or children mining cobalt), but they do want to slow conversion to EVs because they are making huge profits or investments on fossil fuels.

"Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you – Joseph Heller

The rich & powerful want people to think that ALL talk about conspiracy is crazy talk.
They want people to believe there are no real conspiracies.
The media companies they own propagandize that there are no conspiracies.
This is so the he rich & powerful can more easily get away with their conspiracies.
Well there have been some real true conspiracies in the past (light bulbs, tobacco, GM & Texaco/Chevron prevent EV batteries & market viable EV1 ), and there are some today.


------------------------------

The Great Lightbulb Conspiracy
The Phoebus cartel engineered a shorter-lived lightbulb and gave birth to planned obsolescence
24 Sep 2014 | 19:00 GMT
https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-history/dawn-of-electronics/the-great-lightbulb-conspiracy

.....
The cartel took its business of shortening the lifetime of bulbs every bit as seriously as earlier researchers had approached their job of lengthening it. Each factory bound by the cartel agreement—and there were hundreds, including GE’s numerous licensees throughout the world—had to regularly send samples of its bulbs to a central testing laboratory in Switzerland. There, the bulbs were thoroughly vetted against cartel standards. If any factory submitted bulbs lasting longer or shorter than the regulated life span for its type, the factory was obliged to pay a fine.


This is why we can't have nice things - Great Lightbulb Conspiracy
Mar 26, 2021
Veritasium



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1994 - 2010 Patent encumbrance of large automotive NiMH batteries
GM & Texaco/Chevron prevent EV batteries & market viable EV1 and other brands use of batteries
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_encumbrance_of_large_automotive_NiMH_batteries

.....
Chevron/Texaco oil companies maintained veto power over any sale or licensing of NiMH battery technology.

...
ban on Panasonic's and Toyota's use of large format NiMH batteries for certain transportation uses until 2010.


------------------------------

Who Killed the Electric Car? is a 2006 documentary film directed by Chris Paine that explores the creation, limited commercialization, and subsequent destruction of the battery electric vehicle in the United States, specifically the General Motors EV1 of the mid-1990s. The film explores the roles of automobile manufacturers, the oil industry, the federal government of the United States, the California government, batteries, hydrogen vehicles, and consumers in limiting the development and adoption of this technology.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Killed_the_Electric_Car?



.....
The second generation EV1 (and second generation EVs released by Honda, Toyota, and others) from 1998 to the end of the program, featured nickel-metal-hydride or even lithium-ion (Nissan) batteries with a range of 100 or more miles. The film documents that the company which had supplied batteries for EV1, Ovonics, had been suppressed from announcing improved batteries, with double the range, lest CARB be convinced that batteries were improving. Later, General Motors sold the supplier's majority control share to the Chevron Corporation and Cobasys.

As part of the not-guilty verdict, the famed engineer Alan Cocconi explains that with laptop computer lithium ion batteries, the EV1 could have been upgraded to a range of 300 miles per charge. He makes this point in front of his T-Zero prototype, the car that inspired the Tesla Roadster (2008).





.....
Oil companies

The oil industry, through its major lobby group the Western States Petroleum Association, is brought to task for financing campaigns to kill utility efforts to build public car charging stations. Through astroturfing groups like "Californians Against Utility Abuse" they posed as consumers instead of the industry interests they actually represented.

Mobil and other oil companies are also shown to be advertising directly against electric cars in national publications, even when electric cars seem to have little to do with their core business. At the end of the film, Chevron bought patents and controlling interest in Ovonics, the advanced battery company featured in the film, ostensibly to prevent modern NiMH batteries from being used in non-hybrid electric cars.

The documentary also refers to manipulation of oil prices by overseas suppliers in the 1980s as an example of the industry working to kill competition and keep customers from moving toward alternatives to oil.




------------------------------

 

[firsttruck]

Burning fossil fuels was responsible for about 8.7 million deaths globally in 2018.

The number that have degraded lives from asthma, other respiratory diseases, lung damage, heart damage is many times higher than the deaths.

....

Wow, every post so far misses the points. According to yous, that 40 year old with 15 years in a trade, a mortgage, and two kids will just have to get trained in a new profession and start competing with his juniors because his industry is getting the wrecking ball. "Sucks to be your making buggy whips but this is the new thing so go polish that resume."

....

It took Pittsburgh a lot of concerted effort and planning and money to be the thriving place today. Flint got fucked and unless we give a shit, these workers will too.

Bunch of self-righteous privileged yahoos...

The fault for sudden loss of jobs is with the auto companies. They had over twenty years and did practically nothing until Elon & Tesla forced their hand. If Elon & Tesla had failed in the Model 3 ramp and went bankrupt you can be sure the auto companies would not be doing the little progress in EV releases they have made in the last year or claim they will do by 2025.

The worker transition could have been less dramatic if the auto companies had used the twenty year efficiently in doing a conversion. Now the conversion will be more abrupt.

It is not a "Bunch of self-righteous privileged yahoos.". It is telling it like it is in today's world.
We might like the workers to have stable long-term jobs too but that is not going to happen.

I had four careers because in this day and age companies have no loyalty to long time workers. Company consolidations, "takeovers, right sizing", moving to China, automation caused massive chaos in the labor market in the last 40 years. There is no worker stability like 1945 - 1960s. Any auto worker who was with same company 15 years was extremely lucky and very rare. Unicorns. In last 22 years there has been three severe recessions. Does 15 years in a single company even exist any more? Even in Japan they lay off workers.
Any worker that wants to survive better be planning & training for the next career before the current one gets pulled from underneath them.

Funny that you have less concern for the extra millions that die every year and the 10s of millions whose health is negatively impacted including millions of children.

The conversion should have seriously started in 1999. So those auto companies had over twenty years to get the transition going & move the workers to the new technology or other job fields.

What is the extra death toll for the twenty years of delay (180 million)? Those injured?

 

[DarinCT]

The fault for sudden loss of jobs is with the auto companies. They had over twenty years and did practically nothing until Elon & Tesla forced their hand. If Elon & Tesla had failed in the Model 3 ramp and went bankrupt you can be sure the auto companies would not be doing the little progress in EV releases they have made in the last year or claim they will do by 2025.

The conversion should have seriously started in 1999. So those auto companies had over twenty years to get the transition going & move the workers to the new technology or other job fields.

The report is not sudden job loss and it is not the United States. It's Germany and by 2030. Yes, Elon and Tesla forced them because he was successful. Are you suggesting an ICE CEO who has a shareholder responsibility are supposed to tell their board a.k.a. their bosses, "hey, we're going to risk current shareholder value to lower topline revenue so that we can ignore our momentum and try something new." No they wouldn't; Tesla was necessary. His revolutionary was needed so that the laggards would be evolutionary. It's a shitty set of circumstances and sequence but it was the order that will change things.

I had four careers because in this day and age companies have no loyalty to long time workers. Company consolidations, "takeovers, right sizing", moving to China, automation caused massive chaos in the labor market in the last 40 years. There is no worker stability like 1945 - 1960s. Any auto worker who was with same company 15 years was extremely lucky and very rare. Unicorns. In last 22 years there has been three severe recessions. Does 15 years in a single company even exist any more? Even in Japan they lay off workers.

You are not a union worker in Germany. I agree that companies don't give a shit about employees, long term or not. Large companies care about the cost of attrition, the cost to hire and train. Yes, exogenous events cause all sorts of transformation, whether it's that "upstart Tesla and those green governments" (that I love) or an MBS-induced global recession. This is a research paper that says in the future there will be job loss. Each party is making hay from it. My point is not that these workers deserve a job, my point is that there's an opportunity for governments, companies, educational institutions, and communities to do something proactively. From what I read, I think you believe - and correct me if I'm wrong - that it's the employees responsibility and I'm going to go a step further and say you think that because nobody else will give a shit.

(Yes, 15 year jobs do exist although it not as common)

Any worker that wants to survive better be planning & training for the next career before the current one gets pulled from underneath them.

That's the whole point of my post. In the US, it's often "don't let the door hit you on the way out" and yet, my point about Pittsburgh vs Flint is about the difference between all of the interested parties figuring out pathways where it's win-win. Detroit is literally shrinking because they didn't figure it out whereas Pittsburgh did. Job handouts, no. Keeping them employed, yes, just not making legacy cars. So, knowing that ~200K jobs need to be turned over, who needs to do what to keep everyone winning. Maybe that university needs to get a battery recycling certification program started from the ground up and it not suck. Maybe the mental health professionals need to make themselves available at the time of job loss instead of after they've hit the bottle. Maybe the government doesn't want to lose tax proceeds so they need to figure it out.

Funny that you have less concern for the extra millions that die every year and the 10s of millions whose health is negatively impacted including millions of children.

I do not want them to continue making ICE vehicles. I also think there's a win-win for EV and workers displaced. Yes, I'm well aware of the physical health damage from peat burned in huts to coal plants to highway-induced asthma to every other thing burning a product does, even to the children. I'm not exactly sure where you thought I wanted to continue polluting, harming, and destroying our environment.

It is not a "Bunch of self-righteous privileged yahoos.". It is telling it like it is in today's world.
We might like the workers to have stable long-term jobs too but that is not going to happen.

I assert that EV is right and that ICE is wrong. I also think lending a hand to all those on the other side (ICE) to come over is the right way(EV/environmentally friendly) forward. Telling them to figure it out is self-righteous. Telling displaced workers (or displaced anyone for that matter) that it's their responsibility is speaking from a position of the privilege. You figured it out multiple times and I'm sure it wasn't easy so why should they have assistance. They chose poorly so they should have to go through what you went through. Right...? I'll go even more presumptuous, nobody lent you a hand and you took care of business ahead of time so why should you lend them the care or a thought.

The EV future is going to leave a lot of excess - some would even say creative destruction - in its wake. For every Fremont plant, there will be Lordstown/Detroit-Hamtramck/Oshawa. To give you some idea of the scale, those three GM plants are less than 10K workers. NUMMI/Tesla Fremont has less than 10K workers. We're talking about 20x that in 9 years. An individual needs to take responsibility and action, if there are no positions and they are competing with ten thousand others, that's a different story.