Ford to cut thousands of jobs in Europe amidst EV restructuring

Ford has confirmed it will slash its European workforce by at least 3,800 in Europe even as the American car manufacturer is in the process of a restructuring with electric vehicles (EVs) here. This means one in nine jobs would be cut with the bulk of pink slips being handed out in Germany's Cologne and Aachen facilities.

While the sites at Germany would be impacted the most by the job cuts, facilities in the UK - the research centre in Dunton for the most parts - too would take a hit. The need for the job cuts have been necessitated, Ford says, by a shift to EVs which requires less manpower. “There is significantly less work to be done on drivetrains moving out of combustion engines," Martin Sander, General Manager of Ford Model e in Europe told news agency Reuters. "We are moving into a world with less global platforms where less engineering work is necessary. This is why we have to make the adjustments."

The figure of 3,800 is still quite big and bigger than what many worker unions were predicting previously. Ford, however, is determined to play the EV game with intent and has already announced an all-electric fleet in Europe by 2035. This is a mammoth $50 billion exercise and one that will see higher production costs because it is more expensive to manufacture one EV than one ‘conventional’ vehicle. And later this year, the company will set the ball rolling by launching its first EV in Europe, one that based on the Volkswagen MEB platform and will roll out from the Cologne facility.