Ford Cuts One in Nine Jobs in Europe as It Turns Electric

Ford, the U.S. car manufacturer, announced on Tuesday that it will be cutting nearly 4,000 jobs in Europe over the next three years as it hastens to transition from petrol and diesel engines to an all-electric fleet by 2035 while trying to remain competitive.

As our chart shows, the bulk of redundancies will be to engineers working in product development, followed by employees in administrative jobs. Germany is experiencing the brunt of the cuts, with some 2,300 job losses in total, mostly at Ford's Cologne and Aachen sites. The United Kingdom is also heavily affected, with 1,300 job cuts, predominantly expected to be in Dunton, Essex, while the rest of Europe can expect to see around 200 cuts.

While Ford may be one of the first major automotive companies to announce cuts directly linked to the EV transition, it will likely not be the last. “The whole industry is going to get significantly leaner than it was in the past”, Martin Sander, general manager of Ford’s electric-vehicle business in Europe, tells Bloomberg. This is partly due to the fact electric motors are less complex than internal combustion engines and so fewer engineers are needed to work on the EV production.

Ford’s announcement comes as the European Parliament gave its final stamp of approval on the 2035 deadline for the ban of new sales of carbon-emitting petrol and diesel cars.