EV jobs cost Czechs and Slovaks

Here are two data points that will be familiar to central European car manufacturing experts, but maybe not to others: 1. Slovakia and the Czech Republic make more cars per capita than anywhere else on earth. 2. A Slovak think tank says the transition from internal combustion to battery power could cost the country’s workforce 85,000 jobs. Both countries benefited from west European manufacturers’ hunt for low-wage labour after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Both have brought unemployment down and pushed growth up largely by welcoming the car parts and assembly sector in all its diversity. Both now fear they’ll suffer from a third data point: there are a tenth as many moving parts in an EV as there are in an ICE car. As Bloomberg notes, electric drivetrains don’t need pistons or fuel injectors. The default strategy for car makers making the transition is to go big on batteries instead – but Hungary and Poland are cornering that market (and British Volt has shown how hard it is to get into absent secure supply chains). Central Europe’s auto industry may come to resemble Detroit’s in more ways than one.