Climate regulations put in place by President Joe Biden are causing auto manufacturers to turn away from gas-powered vehicles and fossil fuels.
Ford Motor Company’s target of amping up electric vehicle (EV) production likely means several thousand job cuts and potential price increases to pay for the company’s plans, according to a Reuters report.
Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly supports the move to EVs.
“Expanding our electric vehicle charging network means cleaner travel and new good-paying jobs,” Kelly said in a tweet in February. “Our bipartisan infrastructure law is helping us rebuild and grow Arizona’s economy.”
Ford Motor Company is preparing to cut as many as 8,000 jobs in coming weeks to cut costs and amplify the company’s emphasis on EVs, the Wall Street Journal reported. By 2026, Ford plans to spend $50 billion to build 2 million EVs annually. The WSJ claims this decision is a “steep ramp-up” from the 27,140 EVs the auto maker sold in 2021.
“We wish Ford luck,” the WSJ Editorial Board said in a recent report. “But when government steers investment, consumers and workers invariably bear the cost. Let’s hope taxpayers won’t have to bail out auto makers if their government-driven EV investments crash and burn.”
Biden has expressed concern about the future of jobs in a green economy.
“Folks, when I think about climate change—and I’ve been saying this for three years—I think jobs,” Biden said, according to the WSJ.
Auto executives shared the scale at which they wanted the changes to occur.
“To move fast in this space, smaller is better,” said one executive in the WSJ report. “We need to scale EVs quickly in the U.S., and that is one of the aspirations in the administration.”
According to the United Auto Workers Union, a surge in EV production could culminate in the loss of an estimated 35,000 union jobs because it requires fewer parts, the WSJ reported.
California has banned the sale of new gas-powered cars as of 2035, and other states are said to be considering similar laws, according to the WSJ. The Biden administration also recently finalized new greenhouse-gas emission regulations that are essentially an EV mandate.
