Be Careful Of What You Wish For: That Electric Car Could Take Your Job Away

Throughout the bailout bonanza, we were told that the car industry means million of jobs. True enough, before the money was doled out, we learned that auto-related industries employ 3.1 million people around the country. Now, the government is paying big bucks for electric car development. From Tesla all the way to Nissan, the industry is getting $ 25 billions of DOE loans, conditional on the development of advanced vehicle technologies. Which usually means electric cars. What’s wrong with that picture? If successful, it could cost a big chunk of those 3.1 million jobs.

According to The Nikkei [sub] electric vehicles require around one-third of the parts used in conventional automobiles. Let’s take bearings. “If electric vehicles become popular, our business would face head winds,” says Naoki Mitsue, Chief of Japanese bearing maker NSK. An ICE powered car uses between 120 and 150 bearings. An electric car is happy with half of that.

That tricky 7 speed DSG twin clutch transmission could be replaced with something of washer/dryer complexity. Compare an electric motor with a car engine and its myriad of moving high precision parts, driven by thousands of controlled explosions per minute, and you’ll agree that an electric car is a model of simplicity. It’s also a job eater.

Fewer parts, less work. As the car gets simpler, there is less to repair and replace: Mr: Goodwrench could face the fate of the Maytag Man.

If that battery wouldn’t be so obscenely expensive (and with the help of the DOE, they are supposedly working on that), the electric car would cost much less than a conventional one. Once it does, less jobs in banking. Repo men will line up for unemployment benefits. You think it’s a joke?

Japanese parts manufacturers “face the grim prospect that some of their products will become obsolete in the era of electric vehicles,” writes the Nikkei, and reports that “autoparts makers have begun searching for new business models to make up for the inevitable sales declines.” Of course, they plan to make electric parts. But at the end of the day, there is no denying that one third of the parts means one third (or less) of the work.