Source: AFP
As France faces a 2035 deadline to phase out new cars with internal combustion engines, industry workers worry their days may also be numbered.
While there is plenty of optimism in some parts of France, particularly in the north of the country where a “battery valley” is emerging, workers at parts suppliers elsewhere are pessimistic.
With the sale of new cars with petrol and diesel engines only allowed for the next decade in Europe, the industry employing 200,000 people in France faces a forced course of change.
“The transition (to electric vehicles) could have been done when Walor bought us, but they didn’t invest,” said Severine Person, a quality control expert at the company’s facility in the town of Vouziers in France’s northeastern Ardennes region.
Walor purchased the facility in 2018. Tractor and truck connecting rod production is not threatened by the shift to EVs, but demand for differential housings and engine manifolds is likely to see big changes.
Read also
Slow down to save the planet, says Japanese rock star philosopher Saito
Walor was acquired last year by a German fund that specializes in reviving troubled companies and is looking to sell the site in Vouziers and another nearby.
“In the past, Citroen distributed work to everyone in the Ardennes. They didn’t go to the other side of the world to get parts,” said Bruno Bodson, a shop manager at the CFDT union.
Person and her colleagues are resigned to the possible closure of the plant due to its shrinking order book.
But the mood is different in the north of the country where a number of battery “gigafactories” are being built, including that of the Automotive Cells Company (ACC) in Douvrin.
Source: AFP
The consortium includes carmakers Stellantis and Mercedes along with French oil and gas giant TotalEnergies.
ACC built its massive battery factory on the site of a factory that makes engines for Stellantis, whose cars include the famous French brands Citroen and Peugeot.
Read also
‘I’m leaving’: Maduro’s victory sparks fears of another Venezuelan exodus
Stellandis said the site was chosen to respond to a “social need” to retrain factory workers. Staff numbers have fallen from around 5,000 in the 1980s to 700 today.
At the joint venture’s battery training center, Stellantis-Douvrin employees receive 12 weeks of training on how to supervise the highly automated production lines at the battery plant.
Offshore opportunity
According to Plateforme automobile (PFA), a trade association that brings together companies in the sector, by 2026 around 17,000 jobs should be created in factories that make batteries and facilities for their recycling.
While the intention is to make big hires from the industry, it is unclear whether it will be enough to prevent many workers from being left out in the cold.
The latest study carried out by the French metal industry, in 2021, found that the transition to electric cars put 65,000 jobs in the sector at risk by 2030.
Read also
Belgium flexes new locally produced mussels
Bernard Jullien, an economist and researcher who specializes in the French auto industry, puts the job losses from the switch from diesel engines to electric engines in the auto parts sector at 40,000 over a 10- to 15-year horizon.
The impact could be lessened by the fact that many workers in the industry are nearing retirement.
Ludovic Bouvier, regional leader of the CGT metalworkers’ union, is concerned that carmakers and their suppliers will follow the steel industry’s lead.
Source: AFP
With the industry under heavy pressure to cut costs, “the announcement from Europe about the end of internal combustion engines became an opportunity for manufacturers to offshore their production,” he said.
Bouvier was primarily targeting Stellantis, which produces Citroen’s new electric hatchback in Slovakia. Renault produces its R5 hatchback in France.
A recent study by two climate groups found that less human labor needed to build electric vehicles could favor small car manufacturing in Europe.
Read also
Defying the recession, auction houses bid high in Hong Kong
But for economist Jullien it is more likely that the electrification of cars will be accompanied by more offshore activities, reducing total employment in the French car industry to 100,000 or less.
Source: AFP
