Report: AVs, EVs to Create 100,000+ Jobs

Greg Hyde

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14th January 2019

Increased adoption of autonomous and electric vehicles will help create over 100,000 jobs within the US mobility sector over the next decade, a report has claimed.

Detroit Mobility Lab, a group created to promote employment within that city’s mobility sector, has joined forces with management consultants Boston Consulting Group to publish the report. Of the jobs created, it claims “up to 30,000” of them will be in engineering but there are insufficient engineering graduates to fill such roles. It speculates that this number could increase when technologies like drones and autonomous trucks are factored in.

The report argues that a growth in adoption of autonomous and electric vehicle technology will lead to an increased need for “engineers with more sophisticated systems-level skills” and this need is the motivation behind major automakers’ start-up acquisitions and redundancy plans. It says these engineers will need to have “a strong foundation in mathematics and physics; deep skills in artificial intelligence, machine learning, robotics, data sciences, and software; and a passion for cars”.

The report also suggests 65,000 “skilled trade” jobs could be created in the mobility sector, including roles for AV and EV mechanics and AV back-up drivers, as well as several thousand more “remote-support” AV jobs. However, it warns technology will terminate some current roles, requiring employees doing them to undergo “retraining or up-skilling”.