‘Democrats are losing’: a battle on EVs could cost Kamala Harris votes in Michigan

As the critical swing state of Michigan hangs in the balance, experts warn that Democrats' poor messaging over the shift to electric vehicles could lose them the state in November's election.

"I will end the electric vehicle mandate on day one, thereby saving the US auto industry from complete obliteration, which is happening right now," Donald Trump told the Republican national convention in a speech this summer that would reach tens of millions of people.

Despite his burgeoning friendship with Tesla's Elon Musk, Trump has remained a consistent critic of EVs and battery-powered vehicles more generally. The messaging has resonated with many United Auto Workers (UAW) members, eroding Joe Biden's support among union members in Michigan by as much as 25 points since the 2020 election.

The claim that EVs require less labor is probably not true: multiple studies and industry executives have said it takes about as much or more labor to produce EVs. Still, the Biden-Harris campaign has not pushed that essential point, and in the process is losing the messaging war over EVs, imperiling Democrats' chances in tightly contested Michigan as union support sputters, according to Bernie Porn, an Epic-MRA Michigan pollster.

Autoworker votes are critical to Michigan and other must-win upper midwest industrial swing states - Trump won there by a narrow 10,000 votes in 2016.

Biden retook the state with broad union support four years later, but by late 2023, union members here preferred Trump over Biden by a 47-40 margin, Epic-MRA found. Following the UAW endorsement early this year, Biden's support among unions bounced up to 52% - but still 13 points below the last election.

About 55% of state residents are also opposed to the EV transition, polling found.

Trump's claim that the EV transition represents the US auto industry's death knell began to deeply worry union members as Biden guided the nation into the EV transition via the billions of dollars of investment in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act and Inflation Reduction Act.

Trump regularly claims EVs require up to 40% less labor to make than gasoline cars, a statistic repeated by Brian Pannebecker, who backs Trump and is a former UAW member.

Even with the evidence that EVs take the same or more time to produce, skepticism among many autoworkers persists, he said.

"Of course we're not going like that," Pannebecker said. "We'd be suicidal or stupid if we did."

But Trump's claims are not true, and the job-creating power of EVs is "the biggest secret in politics", said Mike Murphy, a Republican with the EV Politics Project, a non-profit that pushes for stronger EV policy.

Its recent focus groups and polling found people across the political spectrum are more supportive of EVs when they learn that it creates jobs, and EV Politics Project is planning to air a television commercial that hits on that point in the coming weeks.

"I don't know why the Biden-Harris administration has been so bad at telling the story," Murphy added. "They need to go on the offense."

Democrats could point to recent General Motors statements on the issue.

"We've done our own analysis at General Motors, and there are other studies that have affirmed that the employee base needed in the future for EV production is very similar to what's needed for a comparable [internal combustion] vehicle today," GM executive Gerald Johnson said.

GM is building a massive new battery plant in Michigan, which has the most announced battery production nationwide. At least seven plants have opened or are in the works, and UAW leadership has been supportive of the EV expansion.

A spokesperson for UAW said support for the EV transition among union members was strong, dismissing opposition within its ranks as rooted in partisan politics.

The idea that EV production requires fewer hours can be traced back to several out-of-context comments made by auto executives and companies underestimating the time demands in 2017, a Heatmap analysis found.

Trump has run with the comments, and the messaging has bounced around the echo chamber without much media scrutiny. On its face the claim makes sense - EVs require fewer parts in their powertrain, so it takes less time to assemble.

The powertrain is what propels the car, and in gas-powered vehicles it contains over 1,000 parts that make up the engine and transmission. An EV powertrain is seemingly simpler - just a few hundred components with batteries, electric motors and power management systems.

But industry observers say the claims about labor hours seem to omit battery packs. And when every component and the complexity of the EV powertrain production process is factored in, it takes about the same or more time to put it together, a recent Carnegie Mellon study found.

The research used shop floor level data and interviews with autoworkers at nine plants to determine how long it takes to make each EV powertrain part. The researchers found EV powertrains require about two to three times more labor to produce than gas - up to 11 worker hours per gas powertrain compared with up to 24 worker hours for a battery powertrain.

"You need to unpack the black box of the production process to figure out whether the assembly time reduction was outweighed by an increase in fabrication complexity," said Christophe Combemale, a study co-author. "We can say very strongly at the moment the evidence suggests it takes as many or perhaps more labor hours to produce [an EV powertrain]."

Recent University of Michigan research took a different approach. It examined output at three factories where EV production replaced gas production. It found output is higher at gas plants, meaning more hours are required to build EVs - a former California GM/Toyota plant produced 80 vehicles per person per year, while a Tesla plant now in the facility averages 30.

Researchers at the Boston Consulting Group came to a similar conclusion in an analysis that looked at an entire car's assembly. It also noted time-consuming complexities in EV production, like the battery pack's heavy weight, which requires the rest of the car to be much lighter than a gas-powered vehicle. The Tesla Model S battery pack weighs more than half a ton, which is offset by using aluminum instead of steel, as is standard with gas vehicles, the paper notes.

However, aluminum is "trickier to work with in a factory" because it is comparatively weak, the paper states, demanding expensive adjustments like spot welding to shore up its strength. The installation of the charging unit, additional wiring, battery loading and alignment all require time not needed in gas assembly.

"This is a significant change for an industry that has spent more than 100 years developing and improving engine manufacturing and vehicle assembly to the highest degrees of efficiency," the paper states.

As the nascent EV production process matures, automakers will find efficiencies that will reduce the manufacturing time. Meanwhile, while the EV market is growing, sales have been slower than expected, and some Michigan plants have recently laid off workers or scaled back employment figures.

In his critique of EVs, Pannebecker, the Trump-backing former UAW member, pointed out the most obvious caveat to research showing they take more hours: batteries and their components largely are not made in the US at the moment, so they are not of use to the UAW.

"No matter which way you look at it, it's a losing proposition for autoworkers," Pannebecker said.

As much as 80% of lithium ion batteries are estimated to be produced in China, but that is changing. A slew of battery plants are scheduled to come online in the US in the coming years in addition to more than 30 already operating, and five of those will be in Michigan.

Even if those plants are built, Pannebecker noted, many of them are not unionized and only pay $15-$18 an hour. Near Youngstown, Ohio, an Ultium battery plant near the once-storied GM Lordstown plant suffers from high turnover because of the low pay that workers there say is in line with a local Waffle House.

But that is also changing. Late last year and early this year the UAW made battery plants a priority in its negotiations with automakers, and the plants' workers can now unionize.

Meanwhile, the Chips and Science Act aimed at reshoring the semiconductor industry that produces critical components to EVs is also helping shift component production to the US. Combemale said there is some potential for autoworkers to be retrained or take on jobs in semiconductor plants or other higher tech settings than a shop floor.

Still, this broad narrative does not seem to be reaching many Michiganders, whether in a union or not. The most recent polling shows only 56% of Michigan union members approve of the EV transition - far below the 74% of Democrats who approve of it. Meanwhile, union members' families disapprove by a 51-45% margin, and support among independent voters is even lower.

But it's not too late to change the messaging for this election, and into the future, said EV Politics' Murphy. Part of the problem may be generational within union ranks - older guys are less supportive because they won't be around as the EV transition progresses, Murphy said.

Democrats need to stop making EVs an environmental issue, which will "divide the voters in half", Murphy said, and instead push the job creation narrative. His focus groups found an up to 19-point improvement on EV approval rating when messaging focused on the latter.

"It's a very powerful way to reframe the argument," Murphy said. "It's one of the best bragging rights they've got. This isn't hard, it's just a story no one knows."