Does Australia have enough skills to make transition to electric vehicles?

Australia’s transition to electric, connected, and autonomous mobility under serious threat from a record shortage of skilled automotive professionals, structural adjustment across 13 industry segments, and a lack of cohesive national planning.

These are the headline conclusions from a new lreport by the Motor Trades Association of Australia (MTAA), which calls for the urgent need for a national plan to manage the transformation of Australia’s 20 million-strong national vehicle fleet away from internal combustion engines.

The MTAA’s Directions in Australia’s Automotive Industry report is the association’s first major review of the country’s automotive industry in four years, and highlights some of the significant obstacles currently preventing any meaningful transition to electric vehicles, and a potential future of connected and autonomous vehicles.

Prime amongst the obstacles is a record and critical shortage of 31,000 skilled automotive professionals, the worst recorded, and emblematic of the “slight” increase in automotive employment across the country, which MTAA reported sat at 385,000.

According to the MTAA, “A lack of access to skilled migrants and the first noticeable internal redistribution of skilled automotive labour from small businesses to sole traders is placing severe strain on service delivery.”

Naturally, delays stemming from the global COVID-19 pandemic were at least partly to blame for this as well, according to the report, with automotive imports decreasing $5.7 billion or 14.1% over 2018/19 levels.

Overall, automotive exports increased while imports decreased, reflecting the ongoing disruptions to automotive supply chains caused by the pandemic – which is particularly evident for new vehicle stock, parts, and accessories.

One bright note out of the report stemming from the global COVID-19 pandemic is the recovery of Australia’s automotive industry, which benefited from the second-highest industry take up from JobKeeper support initiatives.

Nevertheless, uptake of electric vehicles in Australia nevertheless lags behind that of the rest of the world.

This is, of course, relatively unsurprising to anyone who has paid even the vaguest attention to Australian headlines in recent months, with State and Federal governments proposing or imposing backwards legislation that serve only to further prop up the outgoing internal combustion engine and fails to take advantage of the global transition towards and market uptake of electric vehicles.

The MTAA report also highlights the impacts the ongoing transformation of the national fleet to electric vehicles will pose on the industry as a whole.

According to the MTAA, “Traditional automotive businesses that can adapt will likely incur an average investment of almost $80,000, with additional training and on-costs, while absorbing a 42% reduction in revenue from traditional ICE vehicle service and repairs.”

At the end of the day, while this latest MTAA report is not entirely surprising, it nevertheless highlights the need for “a consistent, coordinated, national plan to address current skills shortages, identify and facilitate emerging jobs /skills/ qualifications and manage industry and business transition opportunities.”

“It must also remove the vacuum currently being filled with piecemeal populous jurisdiction policy in areas such as EV subsidies, partial user-pay systems, tax grabs, and the use and regulation of autonomous vehicle systems,” the report concludes.