The low penetration of electric cars means that their prices remain above traditional automobiles even though their structure is noticeably simpler. Diana Junquera, director of Energy Industry and Just Transition of IndustriALL Global Union, put the data on the table during the celebration of the conference on «Transformation of the automotive sector. Working for a fair and orderly transition» organized by UGT in Valencia. The electric car engine requires up to five times as much labor as a diesel engine.
Diana Junquera’s data is that a diesel engine requires 127 workers while the gasoline engine requires 100. Hybrid propulsion requires, on average, 121 employees while the electric motor only 26. Regarding parts, combustion engines The internal motors are made up of about 1,400 parts while the electric motors are made up of only 200 parts.
This configuration of the electric car has represented a revolution in the automotive market. IndustriALL Global Union provides proof of this by the difference in exhibitors at the 2019 Geneva International Motor Show, before Covid, and what happened in the last edition.
The exhibitors before the pandemic were Audi, Cupra, Seat, Skoda, Volkswagen, Bentley, Bugatti, Lamborghini, Porsche, Abarth, Alfa Romeo, Citröen, DS, Fiat, Jeep, Lancia, Maserati, Opel, Peugeot, Chysler, Mercedes- Benz, BMW, Rolls-Royce, Mini, Smart, Aston Martin, Jaguar, Land Rover, Lotus and Mclaren. That is, the traditional automobile brands among which there were no unknown ones.
However, the exhibitors in 2024 were: BYD, Dab Motors, Dacia, ErreErre, Fuoriserie, Isuzu, Kimera, Lazareth, Lucid, MG Motor, Microlino, Pininfarina, Renault, Silence and Totem Autmobili. The list of exhibitors, therefore, has changed radically with the passing of the pandemic and the acceleration that electric mobility has had in this period.
Among the changes that were presented there, Silence’s commitment to interchangeable batteries stands out, which reduces ‘refuelling’ to less than a minute or the eccentric “microlino”, an egg-shaped front door car that advertises that its interior capacity is of “two adults and three cases of beer.”
The problem of the profitability of electric
While from the user’s point of view, the problem of price continues to be the main entry barrier, the conferences organized by UGT also influenced the problem of profitability that the industry entails in producing products that do not acquire the necessary economies of scale that allow its profitability.
Javier Rodrigo, from Forvia, regretted that the automotive industry has been accustomed to assembling “incomplete” cars for four years, something that before 2020 was “unthinkable.” «After Covid came the problem of chips and then the Suez canal. We started to make incompletes and now all we need is a zombie apocalypse because we no longer know what else can happen,” explained the director of Forvia.
Aside from the current management of stock shortages, the problem is that “we do not recover the investment. “The recovery comes through the sale of parts and if sales go down, it is not that we do not have profits, it is that we do not even recover the investment.”
2024-03-17 06:38:31
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