TECH@RISK: The Domestic Innovation, Technology Deployment, Manufacturing, and Jobs at Risk in Stepping Away from Global Leadership on Clean Cars
In this report, we unpack these topline statistics and look in detail at the impact of less stringent standards on demand for clean vehicle technologies and the companies that build them. We look both at today’s vehicle technology manufacturing jobs that may be impacted if standards are weakened, and estimate the impact on future jobs and job growth in the industry.
Our analysis vividly illustrates that—regardless of the modeling approach used—flatlining the standards in 2020 dramatically slows adoption of advanced technologies in almost every vehicle subsystem and cuts demand for products made by hundreds of manufacturers and hundreds of thousands of workers all across the country.
The threat appears particularly acute for those that make the most advanced technologies and materials, but a rollback threatens jobs and investment across the industry. These immediate impacts understate the longer-term impact of losing the competitive technology edge to other nations. Stepping back from leadership on efficiency and emissions reductions in the global vehicle sector means both U.S. jobs lost making the advanced engines, transmissions, components, and materials that consumers count on to deliver fuel savings in popular SUVs, cars, and trucks today, and jobs and business opportunities lost in building the domestic supply chain in emerging and electric vehicle technology for today and tomorrow.
Our analysis finds between 89,000 and 202,000 of tomorrow’s jobs would be lost or foregone as a result of the rollback.