Ford Boss Jim Farley Claims That EV Manufacturing Will Require 40 Percent Less Labor
Ford CEO Jim Farley warned last week of "storm clouds" for auto workers as the eventual transition to electric vehicles will require fewer workers -- 40 percent fewer, according to Farley.
Farley also said Ford needs to make more parts in-house, presumably to help reduce job losses.
From the Financial Times (sub required): “It takes 40 per cent less labour to make an electric car, so . . . we have to insource, so that everyone has a role in this growth,” Farley said at a conference in Detroit focused on improving racial diversity in the auto industry. “We have a whole new supply chain to roll out, in batteries and motors and electronics, and diversity has to play an even greater role in that,” Farley told civil rights activist Jesse Jackson, whose Rainbow Push Coalition sponsored the conference.
Ford is aiming to have 50 percent of its global sales be EVs by 2030.
It's widely expected that the production of EVs will require fewer workers because EVs require fewer parts. In 2018, the United Auto Workers union estimated that it will lose 35,000 jobs -- the union represents about 400,000 workers.
A report out of Germany suggests that the country could lose 400,000 jobs over the next decade during a shift to EV production.
Farley also said earlier this year that the company's workforce is a bit too bloated. Three thousand full-time and contract employees were cut in August. Ford employed 183,000 people at the end of 2021.
Ford, like other OEMs, is partnering with suppliers for battery production. Farley pointed out that the company is undergoing a shift it hasn't seen in six decades.
“If Henry Ford came back to life he would have thought the last 60 years weren’t that exciting, but he would love it right now because we’re totally reinventing the company,” Farley said, according to the Financial Times.
[Image: Ford]
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Tim Healey grew up around the auto-parts business and has always had a love for cars — his parents joke his first word was “‘Vette”. Despite this, he wanted to pursue a career in sports writing but he ended up falling semi-accidentally into the automotive-journalism industry, first at Consumer Guide Automotive and later at Web2Carz.com. He also worked as an industry analyst at Mintel Group and freelanced for About.com, CarFax, Vehix.com, High Gear Media, Torque News, FutureCar.com, Cars.com, among others, and of course Vertical Scope sites such as AutoGuide.com, Off-Road.com, and HybridCars.com. He’s an urbanite and as such, doesn’t need a daily driver, but if he had one, it would be compact, sporty, and have a manual transmission.
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Less assembly workers, sure. However, how many children in open pit mines in the Congo to mine the necessary minerals?
"cobalt is used to refine oil into gasoline" source??