Ford Is Balancing Flip Side Of EV Revolution In Cutting 3K Workers

One reason the EV “revolution” has been halting so far is that there are decidedly negative slip sides to the rosy presentation all-electric vehicles are being given by politicians, journalists, and celebrities and various other hangers-on. For example, for all the environmental gains promised by zero-emission EVs, there are unquestionably huge sustainability offsets in the electricity generation required to power them, the metal mining to make them and their batteries, and even disposal issues.

The labor equation for EVs is similar, for what the EV giveth in terms of new jobs in the transformation of the auto industry to all-electric propulsion, the EV also taketh away in job cuts in traditional internal-combustion-engine development disciplines and related manufacturing. Ford just underscored this reality by announcing 3,000 job cuts that are upcoming in the old “ICE” regime — which it sorted out recently and now calls Ford Blue — even as the automaker prepares to hire thousands more on the EV side.

In fact, Ford CEO Jim Farley’s recent acknowledgement of the coming job cuts followed a recently announced series of initiatives for sourcing and investing in battery capacity and raw materials that are meant to facilitate reaching the company’s targeted annual run rate of production of 600,000 electric vehicles by late 2023 and more than two million by the end of 2026.

That news followed Ford’s announcement in June that it would invest $2 billion and create 3,200 more jobs in Michigan, many of them to support expanded production of the all-electric F-150 Lightning. Ford is calling its EV unit Ford Model e.

“We have too many people” on the Ford Blue side, Ford President and CEO Jim Farley said recently at a Wolfe Research conference.

Ford and the entire auto industry are facing the reality that it takes about 30% fewer workers — mostly because of the lack of an engine and traditional transmission — to make EVs than it does to make traditional vehicles. At the same time, Ford is counting on the continuing popularity of its gasoline-powered vehicles, such as the new Bronco SUV and its other utility-vehicle nameplates, to fund most of the tens of billions of dollars of investments the automaker plans in order to help lead the industry to the other side of the EV divide.

“Ford Blue and Ford Model e are distinct businesses, yes, but they are complementary, and their strategies are intertwined,” Farley told me for Chief Executive earlier this year. “They’re going to make each other better. In Ford Blue, we have the secret weapon of industrial knowhow and scale that any EV startup would envy. And in Ford Model e, the top talent we’re bringing together will create cutting-edge software and embedded systems for all of Ford’s vehicles—not just EVs.

“These two focused businesses aren’t just going to co-exist—they’re going to cooperate, they’re going to make one another better, and they’re going to be pivotal to each other’s success.”

At the same time Ford and other automakers are beginning to figure out how to make the transition, political leaders in big auto-job states are doing the same thing. To that end, for instance, the Michigan Economic Development Corporation is “working on” the problem and “trying to be very creative,” Quentin Messer, chief executive officer of the state organization, told me recently.

“We’re going to be creative about helping [auto employees] reapply the skills they have” if they’re victimized by the industry’s shift to EVs, Messer said. At the same time, he said, “People have to be versatile and adaptable in their skills.”