10 ms·

A mechanic offered a reason why no one wants to work in the industry

• csours 1y ago
  Disclosure: I work for General Motors (on software, not as a design engineer), this is solely my own opinion and experience. An automotive assembly line consists of many "footprints" chained together. Each footprint is scheduled to have the same amount of work (in seconds). That work rate is also called the line rate, often expressed in jobs per hour. So 70 jph could also be expressed as 51.4 seconds per footprint. Working backwards from the time you drive the finished vehicle off the end of the line, a truck assembly plant works like this: v Engine line ------------- Final Line <-- Chassis (frame) ------------- ^ Trim Line (body)--------Paint Shop <------ Body Shop <--- Stamped Metal Or in mermaid: graph TD subgraph Chassis Shop Fr[Frame Line] -->EM EM[Engine Marriage] -->C C[Chassis Line] --> BM BM[Body Marriage] -->F F[Final Line] end subgraph Engine E[Engine Line] --> EM end subgraph Body Assembly B[Body Shop] --> P[Paint Shop] P --> T[Trim Shop] T --> BM end Anyway, each set of tasks in a footprint takes the same amount of time, or they get split up to take the same amount of time. So setting the engine on the frame must not take longer than 51.4 seconds, and setting the body on the frame also must not take longer than 51.4 seconds. (Along with all of the other ~~1,000 assembly footprints) As a matter of simple evolution, no design that takes longer will be produced, because it does not survive the first round of selection: Assembly. Designs that survive Assembly may eventually need Maintenance, but by then the genes have already been passed on. Now you may say that Engineers are smart enough to fix both problems, but I don't believe in Intelligent Design. Snark aside - maintenance falls under "residual value", and "residual value" may be a luxury that the automaker cannot afford. *** To be clear, I am using 51.4 seconds as a stand-in exemplar for many other requirements in the assembly process. ---- Show me the outcome, and I will describe the incentives ~ Inverse Munger Automotive design engineers have to satisfy MANY criteria, the following items entail LISTs of requirements, not a single req. - the part must function (includes failure modes) - the part must be manufacturable (make the part itself) - the part must be assembl-able (it has to fit with the parts around it) - ... be lightweight, environmentally friendly, comply with government requirements - - then, to actually exist: - the part will be prototyped in a pre-production environment - a component plant will be set up to manufacture that part - the manufactured part will be tested to ensure that it still meets the design criteria Every part of this process will make your design engineers sad and tired. Now, once you have all the parts you need to make a vehicle, you can design the vehicle so that all those parts work together. If you find out that you have to change the design of a part while you are designing the vehicle, this pushes back your project completion date. This makes the spreadsheets upset, and the spreadsheets take it out on your stock price. ---- Ok so "why don't they just" make the design better for the next model year? Because those engineers have been assigned to another project! Also, design changes incur costs, which pushes out the program pay-off period. You amortize Research and Design costs over the actual vehicles produced. Those vehicles have to be competitive in the market - price per value. The Value Proposition for maintain-ability/repair-ability is not readily apparent at time of purchase. This is why "residual value" is a luxury. No one gets to pick all of their own success criteria. ~~~ Again, this is all just like my opinion.
• staminade 1y ago
  Standard CEO: "I'll do anything to hire more skilled workers, except pay them a reasonable wage."
  • Marsymars 1y ago
    That's not really what Farley is saying if you read through the whole interview: https://www.theverge.com/podcast/784875/ford-ceo-jim-farley-interview-ev-cars-china-trump-tariffs-carplay https://www.theverge.com/podcast/784875/ford-ceo-jim-farley-... e.g. "We’re investing in trade schools and scholarships to recruit technicians for vehicle repair as well as our factories." "But this is a society problem. The one that bothers me the most is cultural. We, as a culture, think that everyone has to go to an Ivy League school to be valuable in our society, yet we all know that our parents and grandparents made our country wonderful because of these kinds of jobs. There’s incredible dignity in emergency services, and people can have wonderful careers. But our society doesn’t celebrate those people like they do the latest AI engineer."
    • jayd16 1y ago
      Yeah, why do we as a society want high paying jobs that we're not forced to take 40 minutes of pay for hours of work? Clearly its the celebration that's missing.
      • thewebguyd 1y ago
        That's the cultural issue that's talked about, which also caused the explosion of people trying to get into tech whether they actually liked the work or not. Because the choice is/was - make $20/hr busting my ass with body breaking work and barely scrape by, or get a CS degree and live comfortably because no other career offers the pay required. The cultural issue is - why aren't other careers paid as well? (Aka, why don't we value them). Someone risking bodily injury in a trade arguably should be paid more than most desk jobs, but they aren't. Much like discussion here on HN about how we need an IC promotion path that doesn't lead to management, society needs equal opportunities for high paying careers across a variety of fields, not just white collar or tech work.
• ares623 1y ago
  Is this the new "learn to code"
  • stavros 1y ago
    No, "learn to code" was the supply-side response of people who saw software engineers get paid shittons of money. This is a demand-side CEO lamenting the fact that he can't get people to fix cars for cheap, so literally the opposite problem.
    • downrightmike 1y ago
      The Demand-side marketing got you, LTC was 95% supply-side, +5% parroting.
• stavros 1y ago
  Every single time someone says "there's a shortage of <profession>", you can mentally substitute it for "we can't get <profession> for cheap".
  • ares623 1y ago
    Agreed. It kinda worked for software for a bit since it was such a new field, so there could’ve been some truth to it just as a matter of time to get the systems in place to educate people.
  • bko 1y ago
    While that's true, there is some market clearing price in which the activity just ceases to exist. For instance, take something with a small marginal benefit like a dedicated person at a supermarket to bag groceries. It's a nice to have but the value to the employer is probably less than a $15 minimum wage. So you could say there is a shortage of grocery baggers since there is no one willing to do it at a market clearing price. Doesn't mean we should do anything about it. There will always be some extra activity that would take place at a lower price, but it's worth while to notice that.
    • the_real_cher 1y ago
      That doesnt make sense to me. Seems like theres either a demand for something or there isnt. And the amount of demand sets the rate of pay. The invisible hand.
      • frankc 1y ago
        Demand is a function of price. At any given price there is a quantity demanded. To know the price you also need to know the supply function. There is a demand for socks but if no one is will to supply socks for less a million dollars, the quantity demanded of socks at that price could be 0.
        • the_real_cher 1y ago
• LaSombra 1y ago
  Excessive regulation to blame? How so?
  • maeglin 1y ago
    Heh, they just love blaming regulation. But I don't see anything about that in the article?
  • BirAdam 1y ago
    Government regulations around fuel efficiency per size of vehicle as well as crash test safety as well as materials. People universally seem to dislike the size increase in vehicles, but this was due largely to magical requirements for fuel efficiency standards. The obvious result was putting smaller engines in larger cars and adding a turbo. On the complexity side of things, cramming the safety gear into the car while also getting maximal efficiency and keeping costs low meant some rather terrible design choices from a repairability perspective. All that said, I do love the safety requirements. I got hit by a Ford F150 in a Miata and walked away perfectly fine.
    • laughing_man 1y ago
      Agreed on the safety. I can't tell how safe a car is by looking at it, so I'm all for government minimums in that area. I'm not convinced CAFE is the way to go for fuel efficiency. The obvious thing to do is put some kind of levy on the expected total emissions of the vehicle over its lifetime, regardless of size, which would encourage people to buy cars no larger than their needs dictate. The current system seems inefficient.
• HPsquared 1y ago
  Auto mechanics do things to "flat rate" where each task is listed as taking a given amount of time. There seems to be a lot of variation between what the book says, and how long the tasks actually take. How are these flat rates assessed? I wonder if it's assuming a new car with no complications or wear and tear to components, or rust etc.
  • alistairSH 1y ago
    Book rates are often set by the manufacturer. In theory, they have a mechanic do the job and time it. The real big problem is warranty work is only paid at a fraction of the book rate. So if a job normally takes three hours if you do it under warranty, you only get paid for two hours. It’s a massive disincentive for mechanics to work long-term for a brand-name dealership that sells new cars. They always run the risk of getting shafted by too much warranty work.
    • klooney 1y ago
      Why do dealerships assume warranty risk instead of the manufacturer?
      • potato3732842 1y ago
        To give them an incentive not to just rubber stamp every warranty claim.
      • alistairSH 1y ago
        I'm pretty sure the manufacturer does pay for the warranty repair. But only at the fractional rate. The dealership effectively passes that loss onto its employees. Working for a small, independent shop can have better wage/salary, but often lacks benefits (health care in particular) and comes with all the usual downsides of a small business (one bad owner/manager can ruin the experience).
        • wongarsu 1y ago
          If they assess that a repair needs three hours, then only pay two hours of work if it's under warranty, I don't see how that doesn't mean that either they know that the book estimate is an overestimate and reimburse the correct amount, or the book estimate is correct and the dealership effectivley assumes 33% of the warranty risk because they only get reimbursed for 66% of the repair cost. (the third alternative is that the book estimate is underestimating, but that's basically the second case, but worse). Neither of those cases looks like fair business dealings
• dugmartin 1y ago
  The "design for unmaintainability" problem has been around for a while. I remember helping a friend change his plugs on this Ford Ranger in the early 90s. The closest two plugs to the firewall required you to climb into the engine bay and basically hug the engine to get your arm into position to blindly get to the plugs. If you look around on YouTube you'll see some crazy mechanic videos where they show things like bolts located in impossible to loosen locations. Cars used to be simpler to work on because a) they inherently were simpler and b) the engine bay used to have a lot of room to work in. Both of these things are not coming back.
  • burnt-resistor 1y ago
    It's kind of always been that way to varying degrees. In the 70's/80's, changing the Porsche 911 spark plugs required dropping the engine. Also, in addition to planned obsolescence and repair hostility is Design for Manufacturing (DfM) that doesn't care about maintainability, safety, comfort, or durability, only lowest cost to shove things together on an assembly line. This is why there are some cars that require removing the wheel well to change the oil filter and other that have things completely out-of-order or require absurd tools to service. My grandfather was a 30 year Chrysler dealer mechanic who had a dozen or so custom tools for very specific purposes. Source: Dad had an A/C & electrical mechanic shop next to a Porsche specialist shop.
    • nialse 1y ago
      In the 70's/80's you could fit a person in the engine bay of a Volvo. So, varying degrees of complexity and difficulty to fix things.
      • rpcope1 1y ago
        The red block Volvos would also run for literally millions of miles, and outside of the turbo models were pretty thrifty on gas. We've fallen a long ways.
        • pixl97 1y ago
• burnt-resistor 1y ago
  Yes, opining for wage suppression but also here's a mechanic owner/operator explaining the situation: https://youtu.be/9cfbhxsqW84 https://youtu.be/9cfbhxsqW84
  • ripe 1y ago
    Thanks for posting. Long video, but at about the 12-minute mark he says something about warranty work, relevant to TFA. He says that the hourly rate for any work done under warranty is set artificially low by the manufacturer. Say a dealership would normally charge a customer $200 an hour for a job, of which the technician will make about $50 an hour. But if the same work is done under warranty, i.e., the manufacturer is paying, the dealership will get only $100 an hour. The dealership, in turn, will reduce the technician's pay to less than $50. Thus, the manufacturer is squeezing the dealership, which is squeezing the tech.
• gherkinnn 1y ago
  The other day I listened to The Verge's Decoder episode with the Ford CEO [0] and unlike most other CEOs, he almost felt genuine. There was a noticeable lack of BS. Have I been played? The lack of mechanics was mentioned and I recall him saying that they're building up apprenticeship programs and the US should take more pride in blue collar work. 0- https://www.theverge.com/podcast/784875/ford-ceo-jim-farley-interview-ev-cars-china-trump-tariffs-carplay https://www.theverge.com/podcast/784875/ford-ceo-jim-farley-...
  • nradov 1y ago
    Right, because "pride" can substitute for decent wages, working conditions, and job security. /s
• pylua 1y ago
  How is this legal?
• Drunkfoowl 1y ago
  [dead]
• xtiansimon 1y ago
  Emperor has no clothes. Instagram is full of videos by mechanics explaining this or that brand/model is stupidly engineered. Known problem. And mechanics do not have a seat at the table where these matters are discussed and decided upon. Unless he plans to change that…
  • _DeadFred_ 1y ago
    And a good portion of the people with a seat at the table are consultants working for TATA.
    • downrightmike 1y ago
      TATA owns Jaguar/Land Rover and they got ransomwared into complete shutdown. the UK Gov't is giving them $1.5 Billion to get back to working, because it is tanking their entire economy. Really shows how little they care about the needful for the things they own directly, then extrapolate that out to all the consulting they do. Complete shit.
  • downrightmike 1y ago
    Because manufacturers are using similar Sub-$9/hr engineers that Boeing is using to help them crash their planes
• billy99k 1y ago
  Car companies don't want you to be able to work on these cars. They would much rather you either buy a new car or use their 3x the cost parts and services.
• bfrog 1y ago
  Electric cars need a lot fewer mechanical repairs. Sounds like yet more reasons to avoid buying one of these overpriced over complicated petro vehicles.
  • Carlseymanh 1y ago
    Sounds like you have no idea how dangerous is to put your hands around electric car batteries and how expensive certified electricians are. Without a mechanic that ALSO has an advanced expert certification for high voltage electronics, the blown BMS or contactor (500$) becomes a whole battery to scrap (20k). Then you add the 6 hours of diagnostics and labor on top of it. Electric vehicles are not an arduino circuit with a couple of led and an usb cable.
    • potato3732842 1y ago
      It sounds like you are the one who has no idea. There are a few basic things you have to not do in order to work on an EV, basically the same rules as for airbag systems but with physically larger components. No modern car is electrically simple, but they all do a pretty good job telling you where you ought to be looking.
      • general1465 1y ago
        He is correct. If you have no idea what are you doing with BEV, you can destroy the car and your garage without even realizing what has just happened.
      • cityofdelusion 1y ago
        This is flatly false. The HV operating procedures on cars add significant complexity and danger to working on them. In fact, any HV work will automatically add a huge chunk of labor hours to any work and is why anything touching the HV system instantly goes into the thousands of dollars as a baseline. We are talking hundreds of volts above fatal baseline and very high amps on accidental discharge. For comparison, its safer on your biology to stick a fork in 120VAC outlet deliberately than to make a mistake with HVDC.
• more_corn 1y ago
  So basically they refuse to pay a reasonable hourly rate. They pay flat fee perfect world rates that cause mechanics to lose money when they encounter real world problems. As always the worker shortage is a “there’s a shortage of skilled workers who refuse to get screwed on pay”
  • general1465 1y ago
    It is very often like that. Employers like to play capitalism with employees, but when tables turn and employees will start playing capitalism with employers then it is suddenly a big problem and ideally government should be involved to help poor little employer out.
    • philipallstar 1y ago
      No it's not. People pay market rate salaries to compete with other employers also wanting those people. Everyone's "playing" capitalism, as free agreements are better than people being forced to do what their master / guild / bureaucrat tells them to do.
• silexia 1y ago
  This article reads as AI generated to me, anyone else see that?
  • OnionBlender 1y ago
    Does it really matter? If the article is poor quality, then it is poor quality. It doesn't matter if it was written by a person or an LLM. I'm more annoyed how so many articles waste time quoting things people say on social media.
    • deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    • mock-possum 1y ago
      I think learning to recognize generated content is an important media literacy skill, and talking about it is one of the best ways to home that skill.
    • em-bee 1y ago
      it matters because if we want to reduce AI slop we need to prevent it from becoming profitable. and if we assume that an AI written article costs a fraction of a regular article, then AI articles will be profitable more easily.
      • pixl97 1y ago
        At this point it's like using the urinal when you're directly beside an ocean full of piss. Dealing with it at an individual level has mostly failed as it would take coordination 'before' people click on the link, and enough people to realize it's junk before they submit it to HN. Being that at least 91 people upvoted this it seems like that isn't working.
        • em-bee 1y ago
          maybe it isn't working because we haven't yet gotten used to detecting AI articles. we can still change that if most of us decide to flag such articles, although, instead of a generic flag i'd like an AI flag or tag (similarly to how we tag older articles with the year). then everyone can decide on their own if it is worth their time.
• 1970-01-01 1y ago
  As usual, low pay + increasing task complexity, YoY. Nothing there has changed for decades except the world around it.
• runamok 1y ago
  The data for long term maintenance can be found but for example the government could mandate it be published for car models to give consumers more insight and be a lever to incentivize designing cars to be more easily maintainable (e.g. not have to remove a truck's cab to replace an oil filter gasket!) https://www.consumerreports.org/cars/car-maintenance/the-cost-of-car-ownership-a1854979198/ https://www.consumerreports.org/cars/car-maintenance/the-cos...
• Night_Thastus 1y ago
  Hard physical labor, increasingly complex work, low pay. That mix will make any job interest dry up.
• beej71 1y ago
  You have to remove the cab to change the oil pan gasket==YOU'LL have to pay ME to buy your stupidly-designed truck. But I realize, driving my 25-year-old car, that someday at this rate I won't have a choice. Maybe someone sells simple, underpowered kit cars and I can put that together.
  • rpcope1 1y ago
    Honestly it feels like we could very well see a microcosm of what happens on big trucks where a certain vintage get sold as "gliders" and get perpetually rebuilt. I don't understand how the market for trucks sustains itself, how many people are there really that want the king doodoo ranch 150k cadillac truck that has engine and transmission problems at 3 years out? I won't be surprised if the government basically bans cars older than 15 years old and totally bans "street rods" and kits meaning we will have no choice but to bend over for an inferior pile of shit truck.
    • capriciotrary 1y ago
      [dead]
    • GuinansEyebrows 1y ago
      leases/business lines of credit/tax benefits. all you gotta do is start an LLC and that f150 is all but yours, baby.
• apt-apt-apt-apt 1y ago
  How do dealerships get away with essentially passing on the downside and risk of warranties to mechanics? Shouldn't it be the business that's shouldering the variability in income due to warranties, since they're the ones that sold the cars with them? It seems similar to a hypothetical restaurant selling memberships with food, then paying workers less when customers buy food with the membership discount.
  • SR2Z 1y ago
    Because dealerships sell cars but don't build them. The warranty really should be from the manufacturer, not the dealership. They get away with passing the risk because they're already apex parasites who have successfully inserted themselves between carmakers and customers, and lobby like crazy everywhere to protect their position.
  • Analemma_ 1y ago
    In every aspect of their operations, dealerships are useless parasitic middlemen who provide no value to customers and exist solely because of protectionist legislation that they pay for with their rent-seeking. Why would you expect repairs and warranty claims to be any different?
  • neves 1y ago
    Capitalism 101: maximize you profit paying the minimum to your workers. Increase the surplus value.
• Atlas667 1y ago
  Low pay and high effort. This has been going on for 500+ years since the very dawn of capitalism.
• add-sub-mul-div 1y ago
  Does every fucking title need to be rewritten? The clickbait witch hunt legacy of Buzzfeed is more annoying today than it ever actually was when it existed.
  • cityofdelusion 1y ago
    motor1 is a clickbait farm site that specializes in tactics like "make an article from a social media post". Unfortunate that it got so much traction here, probably because the audience here is not familiar with the subject matter.
• shekispeaks 1y ago
  This is a very low quality article rehashing some ones FB/Instagram video
• wcunning 1y ago
  I started out my automotive software career with Ford, and as part of the new college hire training program, I actually got to see the process of how "book rate" is determined. They take a brand new car, straight off the assembly line and give a master mechanic a process sheet (head gasket remove and replace, for instance). He has a tool cart with a computer next to it, about 6 feet away from the vehicle. For each step he starts a timer on the computer for that step, picks up the necessary ratchet and socket or whatever, loosens the next bolt, walks the ratchet and socket back to the tool box, puts it away and then finally stops the timer. He probably practices the procedure a few times before the timed run, but basically this prevents the company from setting the time to do a job super crazy low. He's also not allowed to take any shortcuts from the book procedure, which there frequently are a few available (use a long wobble extension bar and a universal joint and you can get in without taking off all of the stuff above that bolt, whatever). On the other hand, this is the warranty rate (meaning new cars, largely less rust, etc). Independent/non-dealer mechanics will typically charge more time than the warranty time estimate from the manufacturer to account for things like rusty vehicles with harder to remove bolts and such, though this is usually in the rate book they subscribe to from whatever information source they pay for (warranty + 20% or so). The issue is that the estimated time for a job is probably a high estimate for a brand new car and probably a low estimate for a several year old car, and the risk of that is on the dealership. The dealership then pays mechanics an hourly wage ($20+, fairly high for well certified master mechanics) and assumes that the hours listed on the job from the manufacturer are accurate, leaving the mechanic to take the risk if it goes over. Generally, the dealership loses on this proposition too, since they lose out on business/bay/electric/heat/etc for the lost time, so they don't like warranty work. They can upcharge/charge for more time/etc on a job for a customer, not for warranty repair due to contractual obligations to the OEM. This is particularly bad for Ford, since they currently lead the industry in recalls and warranty spend, meaning that their dealership networks are getting a lot more of that kind of work with limited profit and no ability to turn it down.
  • MichaelZuo 1y ago
    This seems like a pretty fair system, they do get to do it on unrealistic practically new vehicles, but they also can’t take any practical shortcuts whatsoever. Is there any proposal for some alternate way determining it?
• black_13 1y ago
  [dead]
• kosolam 1y ago
  I’m a bit confused, the top comment describes how time is estimated, which sounds very fair to the mechanic, so why the mechanics are not paid enough eventually? Is it because the estimation doesn’t include the “openning up” process, or what am I missing?
• deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
• WalterBright 1y ago
  My venerable Bronco II was so old, several oil leaks appeared in the engine as the gaskets deteriorated. I spent a year waiting for a shop to have an opening to rebuild or replace the engine. I finally gave up and gave the Bronco to a scrap yard.
• discoutdynamite 1y ago
  How to fix automotive repair: 1. The development and use of "rate books" is de facto price fixing. labor is a cost, and it has a price. Ban them by law. 2. Take the computers away from the engineers. There should be no ability to drag and drop assemblies to reshape them. No ability to make parts that are computed to barely meet requirements. 3. Patent licensing goes to a small flat fee per item per use. How about $1. A modern car can have upwards of 10,000 active patents for all components. All "Design Copyrights" are voided. A good design isnt created, it is recognized. 4. End nearly all "mandatory technologies" and features. Straight from Hayek et al, Incredible Bread Machine on wheels. t. a Greasy Dirty Technician
• i1856511 1y ago
  The problem is entirely due to the labor and compensation for mechanics. The Mechanics get a shit proposition. If you are smart, you do not do it. Exhibit A, mechanics are paid a fraction of revenue but are 100% responsible for warranty. Imagine if you shipped a bug, you are told to work without pay to fix it. That is what a mechanic does.
  • mrbadguy 1y ago
    It’s even worse than that: someone else shipped the bug and you have to work without pay to fix it.
• awlirjalwk 1y ago
  This is world-wide, not just in the automotive industry. The US military has the same problem. The Navy has submarines sitting in port unable to go to sea because they don't have enough mechanics to run or repair them. When I was in the Navy, we were being assigned more than 24hrs of work per day. Management knew it wasn't being completed and they were falsifying nuclear engineering maintenance records, sweeping it straight under the rug. In a time when all other jobs lost their bonuses or started force-retiring people, we were being offered near-six-figure bonuses to re-enlist for two more years. If you played it right you could get it tax-free and it would almost double your take-home compensation. And we were all turning them down because the job was so horrible. After I got out of the military I worked in mechanical engineering in several different industries before switching to software. Most of the best mechanics I knew switched to software.
  • wonderwonder 1y ago
    Does the military train you to be a mechanic from scratch?
• rootusrootus 1y ago
  I smell bullshit. Ford does many things I do not really appreciate, but setting the book time of a pickup cab removal at less than an hour is definitely not one of them.
• giantg2 1y ago
  Nobody wants to work for dealships. There are plenty of mechanics that that work at their own shops or for independent shops for better pay and conditions. Some places choose to do just the easier services (eg no transmission or internal engine work), no weekends, etc
• horns4lyfe 1y ago
  Is there a world out there where we could treat people like humans instead of “resources”? How far up the chain do you have to go to find the gross people making these decisions?
  • ttz 1y ago
    in tech? oft times you just look at your manager or skip level
• balderdash 1y ago
  I mean another pretty obvious reason is that most mechanics get an extremely low ratio of what they are paid vs what they are billed at.
  • laughing_man 1y ago
    I worked for a software company that was paying me $27/hr (this was a long time ago) salary and sending me to customer sites where I worked around the clock and they billed me at $180/hr for each hour I worked. The rate the mechanics get doesn't really seem out of line to me.
• animitronix 1y ago
  I don't understand how "under warranty" went from the company eating the cost to the mechanics eating the cost. How does that make any sense?
• anovikov 1y ago
  I wonder what are the stats on repairs of electric cars... Maybe part of the problem is that few people want to train for car mechanics knowing that work for most of them will run out mid-career because electric cars are nearly maintenance-free?