U.S. can reach electric car goals only if subsidies focus on building domestic parts industry

In a report released Wednesday, the Economic Policy Institute concluded that switching from gasoline to electric-powered cars will help the U.S. economy only if government subsidies are focused on developing a domestic supply chain and increasing demand for U.S.-made vehicles to avoid job losses, the New York Times reports.

Without additional government investment, the industry could lose about 75,000 jobs by 2030, the year by which President Biden wants half the new vehicles sold in the country to be electric.

By contrast, the report said, if government subsidies were targeted to increase the portion of electric vehicle components that are manufactured domestically, and to increase the market share of U.S.-made vehicles, the industry could add about 150,000 jobs by the end of the decade.

“That’s the payoff — making the sector a center of good jobs again,” said Josh Bivens, an economist who is one of the report’s authors. “If we don’t try to react proactively with good policy we’ll see continued downward pressure on the number of good jobs.”

Looming over the transition to electric vehicles is the fact that they have substantially fewer moving parts than gasoline-powered ones and require less labor to manufacture — about 30 percent less, according to figures from Ford Motor. The vehicle-manufacturing industry employs a little under one million people domestically, including suppliers.