Featured Toyota chairman says millions of jobs will be lost via EV Future

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Toyota Chairman Predicts EV-Only Future Will Destroy Millions Of Jobs | Carscoops
"While the share of EVs continues to grow, the rate at which it does so has seen a significant slowdown, prompting other automakers such as Ford, GM, and Volvo to reassess their previously EV-heavy strategies. Toyota, on the other hand, is selling more cars than any other manufacturer in the US, largely thanks to its robust (and growing) range of hybrid offerings."

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Akio Toyoda - Wikipedia
"Toyoda completed his undergraduate degree in law at Keio University and was awarded his Masters of Finance at Babson College, Massachusetts"

 

I think the UAW is more concerned with the fact that Tesla isn't unionized and is a major EV maker in the US. If they were able to get UAW into the tesla factories, they'd not say this the same way and would instead be pushing for protected jobs during the transition to more EV centric manufacturing.

 

Toyota no longer has any unionized plants in the US. The last one NUMMI - they sold to tesla, and if tesla hadn't bought it none of those former UAW workers would have jobs. This has been a competitive advantage for toyota. Toyota's plants in Japan are unionized. I guess if toyota was worried about american auto worker jobs they would move those foreign jobs to the US ;-) Mercedes, bmw, and vw seem to be going all non UAW in the US even though they have unions in germany. UAW would like to unionize all these plants and tesla and rivian. I doubt they will have much sucess. Union seniority and work rules make it hard for the auto companies versus non unionized, but yes I wish tesla workers were treated better. Maybe tesla can simply shut down the Freemont california plant, and give workers in texas all the benefits that UAW has, without going UAW work and seniority rules.

 

Sure they do, but only if you include hybrids.
Using the term electrified is misleading at best.

You may as well call my previous '76 Chevy Monza 'Electrified' as it had a 12V battery.

 

That has already happened. Didn't Biden slap a 100% tariff on Chinese EVs and the EU is looking to do something simular?

As for German manufacturers; Unions there work cooperatively with management to solve issues rather than adverserally. I worked in a German owned corporation for a while. They see their American workforce as disposable'; we would get hit with layoffs all the time. Upper management claimed that the work rules here were less stringent than those in Germany, so they just ramp up production there and lay us off.....We'd picked up the slack for their long holidays and generous EU sick leave packages; whereas ours was state and federal mandated minimums.

 

More like because they have unions in Germany.

That's capital's obvious move in The Very Big cat-and-mouse game: move most manufacturing to lowest cost, which often means shifting production from union plants to non-union plants even when it incurs extra logistics expense.

German auto unions have been consistently winning more gains for their members and influence within German politics. After WWII they had nothing and had their industry rebooted for them, and it was a rough beginning.

By the 1970s, they had it all in gear and were rightfully throwing their weight around for more pay & benefits. And they kept going, and never really stopped.

Some of the results were a few decades with a heck of a lot of prosperity for skilled working people; a healthy middle class and a lot of their kids' educations paid for.

Have they gone too far? I don't think I sit close enough to make that call, though i can clearly see it's too far for the management of a few German automakers.

 

My experience with Toyota and Unions mirrors yours.
We were trained in Japan for 6 weeks when we started working for Toyota, at the Japanese Toyota Plants working side by side with Japanese Toyota workers.
The Toyota Japan Plants are all Unionized. The Unions worked cooperatively with the Company to make the workers and the Company successful realizing that the more successful the Company is the more successful the workers will be. It is a cooperative partnership that works very well and makes the Japanese Car Industry very successful. The Japan Union and the Japanese workers were to a person very helpful, respectful and cooperative with us American non-union employees. I was a pleasure working with them.
I would have nothing but complements and respect for the Toyota Japanese Unions- their management and their union members - they were our brothers in work who trained us, supervised us and then came to America to work side by side with us in our non-union Plant to ensure our success.

At the Toyota Plant in America we were always paid better, compensated with bonuses generously and for the most part had consistently better benefits than the UAW Plants in America. Experienced none of the Layoffs, Strikes or Management - Worker conflicts and all the other monkeyshines that come with an American Union environment.

 

Yea, only spent 18 months there. While I never got laid-off, a lot of my friends and coworkers did. Then they'd come back for more - reapply for their old jobs. I couldn't live like that and didn't like someone "holding an ax over my neck", and got out on my terms. Benefits package was on the lower end, but in-line with industry standards and competitive for the area. Not much monkeyshine, but then again the 'churn rate' was high.

Just another notch in my resume belt....

 

I scour the want ads every day, but there just isn't need for zeppelin repairmen any more.

 

US autos seem to having some second thoughts, but they have been in favor of EV-mandates, I think because they see labor workforce as the albatross around their necks.

 

US auto has been kicking and screaming, just not as loudly as Toyota.

What US Auto is in favor of, is not having 50 different emissions requirements. They also want government assistance in making a zero emissions vehicle.

Many are realizing it isn’t as easy as they thought. As such they can’t move as fast as they were hoping.

 

Aren't most of those jobs in Washington DC?

 

us auto has two opposing forces that have to be balanced

 

I think its a funny situation where, Toyota is probably being a bit of a dinosaur, moving slowly as they usually do, and likely with some notion of what they want as a minimum outcome for their products. They likely don't think the BZ4X is good, and likely never would have released it if it wasn't in partnership with subaru.

Meanwhile their hybrids are doing fantastic, and they are - relative to standard ICE cars, huge for GHG emissions, especially since they just keep getting more efficient and last so darn long.

The other carmakers, lets be honest, don't have hybrids on the same level of Toyota. So they can sink engineering time into catching up/beating toyota in terms of efficiency using hybrid tech, or they can try to get ahead of Toyota on EVs now.

This is probably where they're at overall, and why they're pushing EVs more (now) and Toyota eating super well with what they have, probably don't want to get passed up knowing they're behind now on that front.

That's how I see it.