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The GM strike is really about the switch to electric cars
- heisenbit 7y agoThe US auto industry is on two non sustainable paths. The first is internal combustion engines. The second is building fewer but more expensive cars.
- Mountain_Skies 7y agoThe second part is difficult because pretty much all cars last longer than they used to. People will grumble about plastic body panels and cheap interiors but overall the average car simply lasts longer than they would in the heyday of the Big 3. Even with a growing population, better built cars are creating less demand. There are other factors, such as ride sharing, remote work, and online socializing, but none of them point to the solution being to build more cars. Perhaps making less expensive entry level cars would get some non-owners to take the plunge but the durability of existing cars makes buying a new entry level model less desirable.
- Merrill 7y agoThe average age is up to 11.8 years for the 278 million car, SUVs and light trucks in the US. The market shift to SUVs was also a shift to more durable vehicles, as was the shift away from US cars to foreign cars. As more and more stringent government regulations make new vehicles less desirable and more expensive, drivers will maintain and retain their existing vehicles until we look like Havana. https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/average-vehicle-age-increase-america/ https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/average-vehicle-age-incre...
- refurb 7y agoRelated to that, reliability is way up. Back in the 1980’s it wasn’t unusual at all to have your car breakdown every year or so and leave you stranded on the side of the road. Nowadays I’ll go months before seeing someone stranded on the side of the road. It’s actually quite amazing.
- tlb 7y agoIn the 70s, there was a widely promoted theory that Detroit had invented carburetors that would make cars get 100 MPG, but they were suppressed by some Big Oil - Big Auto conspiracy. (It was partly promoted by people selling aftermarket carburetors that claimed to, but never did, improve mileage. Some of them used magnets to straighten out the fuel molecules, or something.) But here you can see actual evidence of a similar phenomenon. Slowing down emissions reductions for short-term incentives. Ouch, my poor planet.
- ecf 7y agoJust fire them. It’s painfully obvious they’re attempting to hold back progress that would be beneficial for the entire world.
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- jmnicolas 7y agoYeah, let them eat cake I guess ... It's painfully obvious you have no idea how life is hard down there for people that can't do better than a factory job. There's surely a third way, and we should at least hear them (if you don't want something even worse than Trump in 10 years).
- dang 7y agoPlease don't post unsubstantive comments or shallow dismissals here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- LeoPanthera 7y agoI'm usually on board with HN moderation but I have to disagree here. They're literally refusing to do their jobs, for a reason analogous to farriers striking because the automobile is taking away their jobs because no-one needs horseshoes anymore.
- toomuchtodo 7y agoThey’re striking because they believe they should be paid more considering GM is making billions in profits. Concessions were made when the economy was in trouble, and the union wants those concessions reversed. Why is this unreasonable? I understand that labor unions aren’t well understood in America, but this is what they’re for: to get a better deal from a corporation for their labor. The alternative is what used to happens centuries ago: violent civil unrest over labor conflicts. No one wants that. “Just fire them” is a grossly inaccurate solution for a complex problem.
- blunte 7y agoOne person’s right to keep a job is not greater than humanity’s right to reasonable progress. It’s cases like these that give unions a bad name.
- toomuchtodo 7y agoWhen shipping firms moved to shipping containers mid 20th century, the productivity gains were split between corporations and the union to buy out longshoreman so there was a graceful transition out for these folks who were no longer needed. (Check out the book “The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger - Second Edition”, which goes into some detail about this) It’s not having systems in place like this that give our society a bad name. The US is one of the richest country in the world, no lies needed to say we can’t afford it (we can afford it) or don’t have the legal framework in place to institute it.
- ianai 7y agoThat would be labeled socialism. Seemingly all it takes to defeat a proposal in US politics.
- yardie 7y agoThe word socialism has lost the sting. Considering one of the top presidential candidates has been running in the platform for decades. And the DSA has made large gains in liberal cities. Simply calling something socialism isn’t the scarlet letter it used to be.
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- egypturnash 7y agoThe more that capitalist greedheads label anything that involves being nice to people instead of seeing them as perfect libertarian spheres who act only in their own absolutely rational financial self interests as “socialism”, the more people who give even half a shit about their fellow humans start to think “socialism” must be pretty good.
- seltzered_ 7y agoRelated: “Autoworker union anxiety about EV-related (and smaller, more fuel-efficient car-related) job loss has been a thing for the better part of a decade... but it's been widely ignored, probably because it is so politically awkward ” https://mobile.twitter.com/Tweetermeyer/status/1177562016539496448 https://mobile.twitter.com/Tweetermeyer/status/1177562016539...
- e12e 7y agoIs it? I found this linked from uaw.org: https://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/ny-oped-why-i-strike-20190920-zn2bfvka7nh7dadzm6je74etpi-story.html https://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/ny-oped-why-i-strike-201...
- bob_theslob646 7y ago>We made sacrifices, froze our pensions, halved our pay and gave up benefits to save GM, the automotive industry, and the U.S. economy. These people think they saved the U.S economy? What are they smoking. They still us the government 11.3 billion dollars from the government bailing them out.[1] >GM also chose to rip away our health care coverage in the dead of night, effective immediately and without warning. This is a crucial topic that must be addressed. Should companies be responsible for employee health care? I do not know the answer, but that seems to be the trend.( Cut full time workers, hire part time works to avoid having to pay for healthcare.) [1](https://projects.propublica.org/bailout/entities/233-general-motors https://projects.propublica.org/bailout/entities/233-general...)
- war1025 7y ago> These people think they saved the U.S economy? What are they smoking That's like saying the poor bastard that ended up in Normandy during WWII didn't help win the war. Obviously they didn't do it single-handedly, but they did make sacrifices that kept the automakers from going completely under. The auto industry might not be very important to people on the coasts, but it's a big deal in Michigan. The people made real concessions and now that GM is posting record profits, they don't see why they should be conceding further. And they have a union behind them. So they are raising a fuss. Because they can.
- gimmeThaBeet 7y agoYeah, once again it feels weird in my mind that the shareholder-class needs defending, but in GM's particular case, they went bankrupt. The UAW didn't save that company, they're gone. The UAW definitely made sacrifices to put new GM on solid footing. But my opinion is that the tough truth is that I don't think you can readily expect things to go back to GM 1.0, ever. It's just tough to assess how much GM genuinely acting on what it feels are existential threats. I will readily admit, I'm sympathetic to the company making hard to swallow decisions in its long term interests. I'm just thinking, if GM fails again, that's going to do zero good for the UAW, and I really feel like the UAW isn't taking that seriously enough.
- Aloha 7y agoI'm skeptical that the labor differential is as big as this article implies frankly. This strike is pretty straightforward in cause, GM wants to pay less, and wants their employees to cover more of their healthcare costs, the Union isnt okay with this. Working in an auto plant is hard, backbreaking work that will leave you physically broken by retirement - and while the transition to electric cars may slightly reduce the amount of labor needed, it won't change how hard or backbreaking the work is.
- avar 7y ago> Working in an auto plant is hard, backbreaking work that will leave you physically broken by retirement Is it? I've watched a lot of modern car assembly line videos and it doesn't seem to be hard or backbreaking at all. Boring and tedious? Sure, here's one for GM's best selling vehicle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Nr3I-Fddv8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Nr3I-Fddv8 At no point do you see anyone lift something heavy without the assistance of overhead cranes.
- throwawayjava 7y agoYes, it is hard work. That's a promotional video showing you what the most automated parts look like when automation goes perfectly. Not everything is so automated, and everything doesn't always go perfectly.
- Aloha 7y agoExactly, it also doesn't cover stuff like, the stamping plants and other stuff - there is more that goes into cars than just vehicle assembly.
- avar 7y agoI'm not saying that backbreaking work doesn't exist within automotive manufacturing, but that categorizing the entire workforce as engaging in such work is clearly a gross exaggeration the way modern manufacturing is done. Sure, backbreaking work exists within the industry, but you can also tell from how some people are dressed (just street clothes with no safety gear) and by how fast the line moves that there's a lot of jobs that are no more physically demanding than some office work or fast food work. E.g. it's someone's job to sit in a new car and make sure all the buttons and interface elements work, or to visually inspect the paint job and flag blemishes for fixing further down the line etc.
- ericmay 7y agoAs a society we need to make sure we are taking care of people when their industry is destroyed. The whole “learn 2 code” thing that was directed toward coal workers was exactly the wrong thing to do. If we want those coal plants to shut down we should have offered to pay off the workers until they reached retirement age. If you “take away” someone’s job for the sake of progress, then you’ll make enemies of progress and leave people behind and cause generations of anything ranging from hatred to apathy to loathing. Here in this case I don’t think it’s quite the same, but this sort of thing is NOT going to go away, and we need to figure it out. Just retraining of “find another job” isn’t good enough.
- mfer 7y agoIf you take away people’s ability to provide for themselves and their families you’re bound to make enemies and that’s due to hurting people. It says a lot about what one calls progress I would suggest helping those people move on to something else that enables them to care for their families. It’ll make change far more palatable and is better for people
- adrianN 7y agoWhat would be concrete actions that enable someone in their late forties or early fifties to find a new job when the whole industry they've worked in so far basically disappears? Say someone working at a coal plant, or someone assembling ICEs? Who will hire them?
- iagovar 7y agoIf they don't find anything related, tangential etc, nobody. That's the reality we are facing off. In Spain several coal mines shut off. The initial idea was to just retire this people. In some cases they made them hop trough some recolocation programs. IMO retiring people is just cheaper. The administrative overhead of managing this people is not worth the cost.
- bdamm 7y agoFor a while call centers were popping up in the wake of factory shutdowns.
- pkaye 7y agoI was watching this Youtube video of Audi electric motor production. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zttC2x9nMEw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zttC2x9nMEw Pretty crazy how much of the motor construction can be automated. There is just no way around it. Union or not, a lot of jobs will disappear. If GM and Ford don't do it then one of the hundred electric car companies around the world will progress in that direction.
- js2 7y agoThe tasks the humans are doing seem somewhat arbitrary. e.g. we see both robots and humans inserting and tightening bolts. I wonder why humans are involved in those steps.
- Mathnerd314 7y agoSomething about ensuring the right pressure / tightness presumably. There are machines that do really sensitive tightening on the market today, but only relatively recently, so the poor human probably has a job only thanks to some ROI analysis that concluded waiting a few years to buy a used machine was more profitable.
- Faark 7y agoWow this factory seems highly ... underutilized to me. Is it normal for so much to stand still all the time? I love how detailed this vid is, though.
- rasz 7y agoLooks like they focused on cutting out labor costs, and not efficiency. I sure hope it was slowed down by factor of at lest 4 for the Video. Look up Chinese electric motor production lines on YT for comparison.
- sprash 7y agoCan somebody explain to me why we need to switch to electric cars when we have Fischer-Tropsch to produce fuel literally out of thin air? We could keep all the existing infrastructure while having zero CO2 impact. I think digging up loads of Lithium and Cobalt and plastering the country with charging stations is neither more sustainable nor less environmentally harmful.
- kennywinker 7y agoI'm not intimately familiar with Fischer-Tropsch, but reading the list of existing plants on the wikipedia page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer–Tropsch_process#Commercialization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer–Tropsch_process#Commer... Virtually all of them are producing synthetic fuel using other fossil fuels. E.g. natural gas or coal. One is using pulp/paper waste, and the other is using a combination of natural gas and landfill gas. So while the process promises to convert "a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen into liquid hydrocarbons" it does not seem that anybody is doing that. You are totally right that there is nothing wrong with liquid hydrocarbon fuels, as long as they are sourced from clean energy, but the fact that nobody is doing it even at a small scale seems to indicate to me that it's not (yet?) viable for some reason.
- sprash 7y ago> Virtually all of them are producing synthetic fuel using other fossil fuels. Recently a plant was demonstrated by DLR in Spain that produced Fuel from air directly only with solar power: https://www.dlr.de/content/en/articles/news/2019/02/20190613_solar-fuel-breakthrough.html https://www.dlr.de/content/en/articles/news/2019/02/20190613... Edit: apparently this converts H2O and liquid CO2 to a "synthesis gas" CO + H which then can easily transformed into any fuel you want via Fische-Tropsch. So the only step that is missing is liquefying CO2 which can be done via conventional solar power using electricity. As far as I see it we have all pieces to the puzzle. Electric cars don't make sense anymore and are actually more harmful to the environment because of all the exotic materials used and the losses from transport of electrical power across the whole country. Also keep in mind that much of the electricity is still produced using coal.
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- _iyig 7y agoRelated previous discussion: "Chevy Volt discontinued: Chevrolet's last Volt rolls off the assembly line" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19236245 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19236245 Sounds like many HN users liked the Volt. Thread also has some insights into the political nature of the Volt's disappearance.
- bluedino 7y agoThere are so many parts involved with a traditional engine and transmission. Living in Michigan, there are lots of companies building these individual parts. I know a guy who works at a place that builds springs for transmissions (https://www.pjws.com/our-products/ https://www.pjws.com/our-products/) Valvetrain parts, pistons, rings, crankshafts, starters, heads, oil pumps, exhaust manifolds, mufflers, fuel injectors, sensors...none of this stuff is needed on an electric car. Hearing UAW members talk about the strike and concessions, they often say things like "they need to guarantee our jobs"...they know electric is coming. At the extreme you have factory workers who are just in denial. "How can electricity have more power than gas?" You can show them a video of a Tesla P100 racing a <insert_fast_car> and they will tell you to your face that it's fake and they don't believe it.
- noobermin 7y agoWhile I'm ignorant, why can't they just make other parts? If you have a lathe and a machine shop, you can make other pieces of metal instead of the pieces of metal you currently make.
- analog31 7y agoI've often heard a similar sentiment: "Why can't we just get everything 3-d printed?" The reason is that the specialized techniques often have cost and performance advantages, especially at higher production volumes, and can make use of materials that are better suited to the needs of the design. For instance, you could conceivably machine a spring from a piece of solid metal, but it would be quite expensive and wouldn't function very well as a spring. Despite general purpose programmable manufacturing technology, the majority of stuff made today avoids those techniques and is made by molding, casting, punching, forming, extruding, and so forth. I'm looking around me in my little office, and I don't think I see anything with a machined part in it.
- noobermin 7y agoThat sentiment underplays the general knowledge (more important) as well as generalized tools that even specialized shops have. It's not like pivoting is easy, it never is. I just don't think every shop has to vanish versus pivoting and finding another lane that fits the new demand. A change in the market landscape doesn't need to spell the end of all shops as we know it.
- punnerud 7y agoThe reduction in parts and need for workers on EV’s is nothing compared to when Bus2Bus transition (without stops) will come.
- danmg 7y agoSaying that "none of this is anyone’s fault" and blaming this on new technology is entirely disingenuous. This is 100% GM's fault because they learned nothing after the government bailed them out in 2009. They continued to scrimp on labor and build quality, and that resulted in horrible cars that no one wants. And their response? Scrimp even more on labor. EVs make up a very small slice of the new car market and virtually none of the truck market. What we're witnessing is a form of kabuki theater, where it looks like GM's hands are tied and the only path forward is to build cars entirely in China. Mind you, this is at the same time that most foreign owned companies build and assemble their cars in domestic US facilities.
- spo81rty 7y agoEV is a small part of the market today. But it's growing fast. As someone who owns an electric car, my next car will definitely be one and I wouldn't buy anything else. These union deals last 4 years. So the manufacturers have to think about labor and planning long term.
- danmg 7y agoBeing optimistic, EVs will never have more than a 30% market share because they're incompatible with a large portion of people's lifestyles. They will find an audience with people exclusively commute and have the facilities to charge at home. At the moment, there's some cachet to having a Tesla but the reality of owning one is represented in the deprecation rate. The energy density of battery technology will never reach that of petroleum. Just bolting on bigger and bigger batteries to try to overcome that has its own engineering, safety and environmental problems.
- magicalhippo 7y ago> The energy density of battery technology will never reach that of petroleum. Not anytime soon at least. But that's besides the point. They don't have to do that, they just have to be good enough.
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- dtornabene 7y agoYeah, uh ctrl-f "buybacks" as in, stock buybacks. This has very little to do with electric cars, but I'm not sure you're going to get that from MarketWatch
- tmp20191006cars 7y agoI'm skeptical of several of the claims in this. Is 125 less parts "far fewer"? Have they really already automated electric car assembly better than gasoline vehicles, even though we've been doing that all my life? Are they really striking because they fear being replaced by robots, or is it for higher wages? History is full of labor transitions. Nobody makes wagon wheels anymore. Noboby cuts pins from wire. Certainly the job opportunities in auto manufacturing are waning, but new jobs are popping up in battery tech, solar, etc. Change is never easy.
- dugditches 7y ago125 parts per car. It's a macro issue not a micro one. If you're making thousands of cars that's a lot of parts. Then eventually when you no longer need the Combustion Engine and Transmission, the two most complicated parts in a car. It's now 1000's of parts per car no longer needed.
- chillacy 7y agoThe industrial revolution of the past century featured mass riots which killed people. In response the government created entirely new and untested social programs like universal high school and labor union-friendly laws. So yes, change is never easy, and this next revolution is projected to be faster and larger in scope. One could expect similar social unrest and new laws.
- Erudite_Genius 7y agoRight now, electric cars are a stupid choice. Half the range, 50x the refuel time, and triple the cost of any gasoline-powered alternative. The day you can buy a $15,000 car that gets 1,000 miles of range that takes 5 minutes to charge at every currently existing gas station will be the day the gasoline-powered car goes extinct.
- LeoPanthera 7y agoRight now, gas cars are a stupid choice. You have to plan your trips around refuelling, instead of leaving the house every day with 100% charge. The running costs mean that over the lifetime of the car, it will cost you far more than an EV. Not to mention the cost and inconvenience of replacing the oil and brake pads - and this is all before we get to the gross emissions from your tailpipe.
- Erudite_Genius 7y agoYou clearly don't own a Tesla. Maintenance costs are the same as gasoline cars if you drive them a lot. Look up "Rich Rebuilds" on YouTube to see an endless supply of videos where he rebuilds Tesla cars, which are falling apart MUCH faster than gasoline cars (including the electric motors). Carbon dioxide has absolutely nothing to do with global average temperature, by the way. If you believe that, then you must also believe in unicorns, the tooth fairy, and that electric cars are a good idea at this point in time.
- spo81rty 7y agoAll cars are a stupid choice compared to a motorcycle, subway or taking a bus... The average car sold in the USA is about $35,000. You can buy an EV for that and less. But to your point, there are companies in China making electric cars for like $15,000. One day in the US we will get a sub $20,000 EV.
- Erudite_Genius 7y agoYou can buy a very nice used car for less than $6,000 all day long, and (if you're still indoctrinated to believe the lie of "carbon dioxide = global heat") has a much SMALLER impact on carbon emissions than ANY new EV. Chinese crap is just that... CRAP. The Chinese don't care about durability one iota, their entire culture is set up to be cheap and disposable. The reason Chinese gas cars are never sold in the U.S. is because they don't meet even the most lax of safety standards. Get into what would be a "fender-bender" in an American car, and the Chinese car will fold up like a bad hand of poker. The REASON that EVs are expensive is because, at least for now, they use rare earth minerals to power them (not to mention the existence of labor unions and burdensome federal regulations on the auto industry driving costs up). Once graphene ultra-capacitors are perfected, you won't need to build a one-ton battery pack made of toxic minerals, so the cost will drop faster than Tesla sales after their government bribes to consumers ran out. Tesla cars are LUXURY TOYS only afforded by the very wealthy. Teslas are marketed to BMW M5 shoppers... NOT Toyota Camry shoppers. (Because a Toyota Camry beats every Tesla in every possible measure except raw acceleration, including purchase cost, running cost, and even carbon impact for the first 2 years. 5 years if you buy used.)
- Waterluvian 7y agoDo electric cars really have far fewer parts? Will this mean they'll become far more reliable and require less maintenance? I know expensive Teslas apparently are like this but what about the budget cars to be?
- spo81rty 7y agoAll electric cars are simple machines in regards to their engines, transmission, and battery. A Nissan Leaf or Chevrolet Bolt is also very simple.
- danans 7y agoYes, and if anything the budget electric cars may be more reliable because of no gimmicky features like gull wing doors.
- Erudite_Genius 7y agoThey may have fewer PARTS, but those parts are MORE expensive and yet take EVEN MORE STEPS during manufacture to create. See this video for more: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHvCcOEMWnw&t=138s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHvCcOEMWnw&t=138s
- gurumeditations 7y agoThis is why people like Peter Thiel have compounds on island nations like New Zealand. Economists say we’re in the midst of a long and painful transition between the old manufacturing economy and... something. The question is, are we going to inch closer to an ideal socialist utopia where everyone has more or less everything because production is so cheap (like in Star Trek), or towards a capitalist dystopia where the Thiels of the world hoard everything in a progressively smaller elite fraction of the population. I’d be very interested to see what China does. 1+ billion people. Do they leave them without jobs? Legally mandate manufacturing to include vast human employment? 100s of millions of people without a purpose will not end well. Just look at the Middle East. People will fight hardest when the stakes are so low. We’ve already got Trump in the US, BJ in the U.K. What will we get next as human labor becomes less and less necessary?
- noobermin 7y agoIt's ironic they mention Germany because Germany's system has very strong unions, with labor representation on their boards, but as they said, the pivot is happening there and there isn't the same anxiety there apparently. It's not like working together isn't possible with people not losing their jobs.
- refurb 7y agoFor whatever reason unions in Europe seem much more on board with “what’s good for the company” versus “what good for the union”. Apparently union reps sit on the board which I’m sure helps.
- Animats 7y agoIt's not clear that electric cars will take less labor to build. Tesla's experience is that their cars take far more labor to build than Ford or Toyota or VW needs to build a car.[1] Even the battery pack operation is surprisingly labor-intensive. Automobile engine building, on the other hand, has been mostly automated since the 1950s. [11 https://www.autonews.com/article/20170611/OEM01/170619951/tesla-s-real-capacity-problem-too-many-people https://www.autonews.com/article/20170611/OEM01/170619951/te...
- klingonopera 7y agoSo, in other words, classic car manufacturers have a 70 year head-start in automation? An EV has far fewer parts than an ICE-vehicle, if not now, then when their production reaches the same level of automation, they'll definitely be less manual labor-intense than ICEs.
- jcampbell1 7y agoI used to work at Ford Plant and provide data for something called the Harbour report which is about manufacturing productivity. Engine and transmission had about 10 hours of direct labor per car, and final assembly was roughly 18 hours. In the transition to electric cars, one could expect a 30% haircut across the board including engineering. Tesla probably isn’t that efficient because the automation isn’t yet reliable. I’d have to ask someone, but I’d bet Tesla is running like 30% off standard. It takes 180 days for workers to work-harden, and years to get the automation optimized. Robots are cheap and easy to buy, but tooling at the end of the robot to do something like install a seat takes a long time to design and make.
- insulanus 7y agoThat's because they are just starting out, and are still designing a lot of things from scratch. Musk had to import two gigantic aluminium presses to stamp the car bodies, and Tesla was suffering a lot of ill fitting body panels initially. It's amazing what they've accomplished so quickly, but it's still early days. Building these at the scale of GM, I can definitely imagine putting an electric one together with less work than a gasoline car with an automatic transmission.
- brownbat 7y agoChina has over ten different companies making EVs under $14,000. If EVs were more like commodity electronics products and less niche, if there were broad competition, things could change faster than anyone expects. There are a lot of entrenched stakeholders in the US though. UAW, dealerships, policy will control the outcome more than technology for a while. https://wattev2buy.com/china-ev-price-list-rank-chinese-electric-cars-by-range-and-price/ https://wattev2buy.com/china-ev-price-list-rank-chinese-elec...
- imglorp 7y agoDealerships may have some pull for now, but they're part of the problem: artificial, parasitic friction. In a free market you could buy a car at Costco or the Internet instead of paying those clowns to haggle and cheat you. Part of Tesla's success is disrupting that mess.
- clomond 7y agoWhile this is technically true, many of the EVs sold at that price in China (especially at the lower end) more closely resemble fully encased modern golf carts then the actual "Electric Cars" many would expect. On top of this, very, very poor quality production and low quality/longevity of some Chinese EV batteries has meant that, even still "You get what you pay for." It was this poor level of quality that made the Chinese government try to entice competition within the space by pulling back EV subsidies. Links that are somewhat related: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-03-26/china-scales-back-subsidies-for-electric-cars-to-spur-innovation https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-03-26/china-sca... https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-03-26/china-scales-back-subsidies-for-electric-cars-to-spur-innovation https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-03-26/china-sca...
- mateo411 7y agoThis is probably tone deaf, but instead of giving the auto workers more money or open more factories, what if they gave them stock grants? If you gave them stock, they workers wouldn't want to open factories that would cause GM to lose money. It would keep the worker and the management incentives aligned.
- cagenut 7y agoNot sure if you're being clever or just defined socialism by accident.
- hanniabu 7y agoWhy is it that anytime a discussion about massive companies paying workers more comes up, that somehow somebody thinks this is socialism. Employees deserve to be fairly compensated.
- phildawes 7y agoHe's saying that by getting stock grants the workers own the means to production (=socialism, sort of)
- shadowgovt 7y agoProbably because "employees deserve to be fairly compensated" is a concept from communism (not socialism, but Americans get the two confused all the time) as soon as you divorce "fairly" from "what the employer and employee agree to in a free labor market." That's not a bad thing, but it's how the definitions and philosophies flow.
- chadcmulligan 7y agoThe capitalists have a way better marketing arm than the communists to, which contributes to the argument
- zarkov99 7y agoNobody "deserves" anything. The market is not just for products.
- TomMckenny 7y agoNo it's about money and who gets it. Unless electric cars are going to generate less revenue than petroleum based, which they won't, the pie is the same size. That manufacturing becomes more efficient is no surprise: it always has. The question is whether they have fewer workers at the same compensation level, fewer workers at a higher compensation level or the same number of workers with fewer hours. Owners are pushing for the first, labor wants anything except the first. And while Keynes envisioned the last, that has clearly no been allowed to happen. It is an archetype case of who benefits from technical improvements and forces driving inequality.
- shadowgovt 7y agoIn practice, it won't be quite that simple. Car companies buy components from third parties, and if entire components are no longer needed, there's no "same number of workers with fewer hours" to be had---catalytic converter companies are just going to see business fall off. But in the company core, final assembly? Yes.
- Judgmentality 7y ago> No it's about money and who gets it. Unless electric cars are going to generate less revenue than petroleum based, which they won't, the pie is the same size. Right now the margins on gasoline vehicles are much better than electric vehicles, partially due to the technology being relatively immature. The internal combustion engine has more than 100 years and hundreds of billions of dollars in R&D behind its infrastructure. Apart from that, most dealerships (which is not the same as the automobile manufacturer, but they are closely related) make most of their money from maintenance and servicing vehicles. One of the big selling points of electric vehicles is that they're simpler and cost less money to maintain. A cursory analysis suggests your opening statement is actually wrong - there will be less revenue if there is widespread shift towards electric vehicles.
- rplst8 7y agoThere might be other revenue streams like battery recycling. Might not replace ICE maintenance jobs completely, but will hopefully provide some cover.
- jaspergilley 7y agoCaution: creative destruction at work. You can choose to take advantage of its benefits, or you can choose to fight it.
- woodandsteel 7y agoThe article is right. There is a huge technological transition from ice's to electrics that is starting to happen. It is going to turn everything upside down, but the US, except for Tesla, is way behind. And the Trump administration is simply clueless.
- remotecool 7y agounions stifle innovation and prevent advancements in technology. They keep factories full of multiple workers doing the job of one person. The taxicab unions wanted to keep a medallion system in place and have pushed Uber and Lyft out of many cities, which will result in higher fares and less efficiency with the routes. It reminds me of the record industry, trying to prevent things like Napster and the digital music revolution, because they didn't want to switch over from physical media.
- myrandomcomment 7y agoOn a personal note, I will not buy another gas car. My wife drove a Model X the other day (hates it). Now looking at an iPace. I will keep my Boxster until I can buy the same thing with an electric motor. Need a car for my daughter soon and only looking at crash test ratings + EV. Gas is dead if you are middle class. I feel the infection point will be when you can get an EV for 20K. Next year, solar and power walls are planned (tried this year but just not enough sun, but so close). From an auto worker standpoint the writing is on the wall. EVs have less parts, less complexity and that means less people and more robots. We as a nation, heck as a planet, need to think about how we are going to live when the manual labor need drops year over year. This is going to hurt China the most I think. I know at my last employer we started with production lines in China, but with in 5 years we moved to Malaysia due to lower cost and the fact that we figured out how to make the assembly less complex and needed less manual labor.
- w1nst0nsm1th 7y agoSide note/joke... If worldwide governments don't want to deal with a popular revolution in the next decade because of the huge change in employment due to major technology shift, they will have to pay for an universal revenue comprising a monthly Steam susbscription plan. Better keep people busy if we don't want them to revolt and bear arms or vote for suckers like Trump and the likes.
- darawk 7y agoWhere are all those people arguing that unions don't impede progress now?
- linksnapzz 7y agoArticle is dumb enough to barely qualify as clickbait. GM (and almost everyone else) has structural overcapacity and fixed-cost issues that would be challenging to deal with, even if the market for electric cars went to zero this evening. Losing money is losing money, and you can go bankrupt just as easily (even if you're losing less money per unit) making electric as you can making ICE vehicles.