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In a World of Robots, Carmakers Persist in Hiring More Humans (bloomberg.com) 44

Posted by msmash from the some-positive-outlook dept.
It looks like car-industry employees who are concerned about robots taking their jobs don't need to worry -- for now, at least. Of the 13 publicly traded automakers with at least 100,000 workers at the end of their most-recent fiscal year, 11 had more staff compared with year-end 2013, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Combined, they had 3.1 million employees, or 11 percent more than four years earlier, the data show. From the report: Carmakers in China and other emerging markets, where growth is strongest, favor human labor because it requires less upfront investment, said Steve Man, an analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence in Hong Kong. In developed markets, tasks that can be handled by robots were automated years ago and automakers are now boosting hiring in research and development as the industry evolves. "There's been a lot of growth in emerging markets, especially China, so that's one reason automakers are adding staff," Man said. "More staff is being added on the R&D side, with the push for autonomous, electric, connected vehicles." A trio of Chinese automakers, SAIC Motor, Dongfeng Motor Group and BYD -- in which Warren Buffett is a major investor -- increased staff by at least 24 percent. Volkswagen accounted for more than one in five jobs among the group of 13, and increased its employee count by 12 percent in the period. Things, however, look differently at General Motors, which shrank its payroll 18 percent to 180,000, and Nissan Motor, which contracted by 2.8 percent to 139,000 workers, the report added.
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In a World of Robots, Carmakers Persist in Hiring More Humans More

In a World of Robots, Carmakers Persist in Hiring More Humans

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  • It's below minimum wage for many jobs. It's about $125 a week a month for manufacturing jobs.

    Why are the chinese hiring humans? They are still cheaper than robots.

    Plus chinese workers are often injured on the job (often permanently) because their safety standards for working with chemicals is still worse. In part, because life is still worth less in china. In the U.S. republicans appear to value human lives at about 1.2 million (based on the regulations they pass). democrats and the courts appear to va

    • > republicans appear to value human lives at about 1.2 million (based on the regulations they pass). democrats and the courts appear to value human life at about $8 million

      I just did 6 different google searches, and could not find anything about the "dollar value of workers" by regulations or parties. Can you provide a citation?

      If no citation appears I will simply reject your claim as being made up. Thank you :-)

      • I did *one* google search and found multiple sources.

        Your google fu apparently sucks or you are in a terrible info bubble.

        Here is my search term: "republicans regulations 1.2 million dollars value of human life"

        https://morningconsult.com/opi... [morningconsult.com]

        "By simply dividing the savings in dollars by the number of deaths, we derive a current value for an American life at about $1.2 million. That is far less than previous estimates, but now we know at least what McConnell and Senate Republicans believe a life is worth.

    • China hires people because that's how you make money. For every employee you employ (provided your employment is flat or increases), you will get a direct cash rebate from the Government (National, Provincial, and often city/municipality). It's how China keeps low employment - they don't have unemployment insurance, they just pay companies to keep people employed. So it's not just the cost of labor that you have to overcome - it's the cash bonus you get for hiring those people.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by rtb61 ( 674572 )

        Here is a hint, half the story is missing. We know roughly how many people were hired but we do not know how many robots were purchased. Sure they hired some people but they also bought a bunch of robots.

        You know what is going to happen, some companies will push much further and faster into electrics leaving other companies behind. Then the big public mind shift will occur and they realise resale on infernal combustions engines will collapse and as a result sales of cars with infernal combustion engines wi

  • The press just needs to calm the fuck down. Robots and AI have been around a long ass time. People were making stupid ass predictions in the 1950's about robot-slave helpers, flying cars, jetpacks, decent batteries, etc... Worlds Fair kinda shit, you know? Technology has really marched on... AI can't even create a decent spellchecker yet and people are finding out it's real work and costly sometimes to replace humans even for easy assembly line jobs. Not always, but more than the press would have you believ

    • On Autoline After Hours a robot-programming gentleman said "Using robots to build cars is difficult. We nickname them Blind, Dumb, One-Armed Bobs because they can't see what they are doing. They have no intelligence. And they only have one arm so the tasks have to be extremely simple."

      He then went on to explain there are many situations where the human is the better worker.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Kjella ( 173770 )

        On Autoline After Hours a robot-programming gentleman said "Using robots to build cars is difficult. We nickname them Blind, Dumb, One-Armed Bobs because they can't see what they are doing. They have no intelligence. And they only have one arm so the tasks have to be extremely simple." He then went on to explain there are many situations where the human is the better worker.

        That's the "classic" industrial robot arms that have been around since the 80s. They're still in use because although quite basic and inflexible they're also cheap and reliable. But if he think those are the only kind of robots coming for the jobs, well then I think he missed the last 30 years. We have robots with sensors. We have robots with more than one arm. And I don't know if they're really intelligent but we have robots that'll check its input, output and self-integrity and will set off alerts and ala

    • Regarding predictions, my impression is that a lot of them are actually fulfilled, even if ultimately in somewhat different way. And perhaps a bit later than expected. Also, concerning cybernetics in particular, it's kind of difficult to satisfy expectations when we don't even have an fully satisfactory (to everyone) definition of what "intelligence" is.

  • This article is full of shit. First you have this.

    Car-industry employees concerned that robots will put them out of work needn’t worry -- at least for now.

    Which, okay Bloomberg, tell me what you got there...

    Auto companies are hiring more for software positions than hardware roles to prepare for a future in which more vehicles are communicating with each other and their surroundings, Man said.

    ...Seriously, what the literally fuck Bloomberg? The folks that are concerned about their job isn't the R&D team, it's the fucking guy who bolts a door onto the car, the folks that make after market shit, and so on, ya know, those hardware people you just fucking glossed over.

    The rising popularity of electric cars is also set to cause an upheaval at manufacturers that make parts for internal-combustion engines.

    Holy MFing Shit! Bloomberg!? So, there's no need for anyone in the auto industry to worry except the people who were the one w

  • Tesla learned that the hard way. They were supposed to be geniuses who will "automate" production (unlike the "legacy" automakers). Then they realized it doesn't work, and like Bob Lutz said: “They will never make money on the Model 3 because the cost is way too high. He’s got 9,000 people in that assembly plant producing less than 150,000 cars a year. The whole thing just doesn’t compute. It’s an automobile company that is headed for the graveyard,”
    • Well, a production job in the car industry costs about $100,000 a year. (Including overhead of management and HR and more of these ancillaries) so it costs $900,000,000 per year over 150,000 cars => $6,000 per car. The Model 3 on average costs $ 45,000 so that gives $39,000 for producing the car and service and all that. That looks not too bad.
  • Saturn, the former GM subsidiary heavily invested in automation. If you remember their slogan "A Different Kind Of Company, A Different Kind Of Car ", their goal was to produce high quality, low labor vehicles. They never quite hit the "quality" mark, and that's exactly where they are today... gone, almost a decade now.
    The fact are - "AI" doesn't exist yet and automation is way over hyped. Thus the nexus between the 2 is vaporware and will be for another decade or 3.

    • When Toyota discontinued the Scion line, they carried over many of the models, but with Toyota badging. I just rented a Toyota iA which two years ago was called the Scion iA.

      Similarly some of the Saturn cars were simply rebadged as "Buick" and continued onward (same production lines).

    • The demise of Saturn was a little more complicated than that... It grew from the panic that GM went into when it realized that it could not figure out how to achieve the quality that Toyota was able to muster on a regular basis. It might surprise people today, but in the 80s Toyota was a willing partner to GM. They tried to teach GM everything they knew about building cars. GM sent engineers and workers to Japan and Toyota was very open with their factories. GM and Toyota renovated one of GM's worst plants

  • I bet they're just extracting their brains and implanting them in the cars, and using them in place of hiring people to write and QA their UI software and anti-collision algorithms.

  • Backroom deals with politics? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    "Don't hit us too hard with environmental regulations and don't look too closely at the taxes our Big Guys should be paying, because you endanger JOBS, JOBS, JOBS".

    Perhaps this old, old saw has a backside, too?

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