In Ohio, Electric Cars Are Starting to Reshape Jobs and Companies

Since 2020, automakers have announced investments of $51 billion in electric vehicle and battery production in the South, compared with $31 billion in states in the Great Lakes region, according to the Center for Automotive Research.

Southern states tend to have lower labor costs, in part because most auto plants there are not unionized. This could pose a problem for the United Auto Workers and President Biden, who want the switch to electric vehicles to create more high-paying union jobs. It could well be that most of the new electric car and battery jobs will end up in the South, where unions face political opposition, and not in the Midwest, where unions have political clout — and where most of the jobs lost in combustion engine vehicles once were.

Ohio has some things going for it. In March, Honda Motor said it would convert one of two assembly lines at its decades-old plant in Marysville, near Columbus, to build electric vehicles. Honda, a Japanese company, is also building a battery factory about an hour away, in Jeffersonville, with LG Energy Solution.

In Ohio, Honda employs more than 14,000 people making cars and motors, and the company’s plans will show whether electric vehicles, which require fewer parts than gasoline cars, will create or destroy jobs.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/05/business/energy-environment/ohio-electric-vehicles-jobs.html