Michigan’s auto industry is poised for an EV revival. Would a Trump presidency slam the brakes?

The next generation of auto workers sat in a meeting room at Macomb Community College in Warren, Michigan, a 40,000-square-foot building on the site of a former World War II tank plant.

In September, the late-teen students were a few weeks into a 68-day program to become controls technicians: employees who install, maintain, and repair robotics and automation systems in plants, especially those for electric vehicles. The program switches between classroom instruction and hands-on work in a lab: a replica of the nearby assembly plant of Stellantis, one of the Big Three U.S. automakers that produces Chryslers, Jeeps, and Rams.

Isiah Pennell was inspired by his father, who works at Dana Incorporated, a nearby supplier of axles, transmissions, and other vehicular necessities. He used to visit the plant as a child and marvel at the massive robots. He remembers driving up and down Woodward Ave., a historical road in Warren where around 100 auto companies have set up over the years, including Henry Ford’s Model T plant.

Other students had different reasons for enrolling. Yaser Aldouais has “an infatuation with robotics.” Isabella Charrette, meanwhile, likes the hands-on approach, which she found much more appealing than traditional academic classwork. “I really like playing with the breadboard,” she says, referring to a plastic panel used to build and test electric circuits. “I love connecting it, and being the best in the class at it.”

These students may well be the future of Michigan’s auto industry, which is committed to maintaining dominance even as cars go electric. A wealth of economic initiatives and training programs are focused on attracting new talent and retaining veteran workers, offering skills that are also transferable to other industries, from defense to cybersecurity.

But demand for EVs has been volatile, and Donald Trump is pushing a narrative that Kamala Harris wants to end sales of all gas-powered cars. As a result, Democrats have been more muted on the campaign trail about their own EV achievements. But even amid the uncertainty, Michigan seems confident that its plans can withstand political upheaval.

Michigan goes full throttle on EVs

The Biden administration has been unequivocal on its support for electric vehicles. It set tailpipe emissions standards that will likely require most new vehicles sold to be EVs 2032, and it offered EV incentives and tax credits through the Inflation Reduction Act.

In April, the White House designated Michigan as the EV Workforce Hub, an initiative to help retool auto plants and retrain workers, so the state can lead the electric revival. The federal government has also invested $16 billion to help the state shift existing plants to EV capacities, and $1 billion to attract auto parts suppliers to the state.

Courting younger new workers and retaining veteran ones is a core goal, from blue collar production jobs to white collar design jobs. Doing that involves a complex array of federal and state initiatives, as well as balancing the needs of many entities: the Big Three auto companies (Stellantis, General Motors, and Ford), educational institutions, labor groups, and job centers.

But progress has been remarkably smooth thus far. Global Epicenter of Mobility (GEM), a Detroit-area initiative, is helping to coordinate between employers and educators, and deploy funding to students. It won a federal grant of $52 million in 2022 that has helped about 140 individuals enroll in subsidized training, with plans to ramp up in the next couple of years, says De La Fuente, director of GEM’s Talent Transformation Project.

As Michigan has become increasingly critical to a Democratic victory, Harris and Tim Walz have rallied in places like Macomb County, stressing a record that favors auto workers. They say the EV shift is inevitable, given China’s surge, but that they want the vehicles to be built in Michigan.

Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan agrees. “If the United States [doesn’t] stay ahead of the curve, we’re going to pay the price over the next decade,” he tells Fast Company. “The Detroit auto companies understand that entirely.”

By emphasizing the talent it has, the Detroit area hopes to keep the legacy automakers around and attract auto parts suppliers to the region—a must-have, given that GM sources from around 3,000 suppliers. GM has an EV assembly plant in the region, Factory Zero, where it makes its electric Hummers, Sierras, and Silverados. Duggan says there are currently 4,000 workers at the plant: “Far more than anything that we saw under the traditional vehicles.”

Colleges plan smart routes for a foggy horizon

North of Detroit, Macomb County was once the beating heart of Michigan’s auto industry. It’s a former bellwether county that has gone redder over recent cycles.

At Macomb Community College, a popular program trains budding controls technicians. Patrick Rouse, the college’s director of workforce for engineering, explains it’s not manufacturing, rather ensuring robots and automation devices are doing their jobs as an EV rolls down the assembly line. It’s especially important for these workers to understand electrical safety, because those vehicles are now charged.

The program was designed so graduates are ready to work on a factory floor from day one. Rouse says that’s common with most community college programs in the state, which design curricula based on the needs of the companies in their backyards.

At Henry Ford College in Dearborn, a major emphasis is on battery testing; it’s developing a battery testing lab and will be one of the few institutions in the country to have one. “That’s an area that nobody was really looking at,” says project manager Kenneth Nichols.

Battery testing made more sense to the college than battery manufacturing. “China’s 20, 25 years ahead of us,” Nichols says. “We’re not going to even try to play that game.”

In Detroit, Schoolcraft College is crafting a new curriculum led by Frank Abkenar, a longtime Ford executive, who saw the need for a broader program on the entire powertrain. Schoolcraft is close to many auto suppliers, including Roush Industries and Bosch, which don’t necessarily need people who can assemble batteries.

The powertrain encompasses the entire propulsion system, including the battery but also the motor or engine, transmission, and driveshaft. “I thought about it holistically,” Abkenar says. “Don’t just train people for factories. Train them for basic fundamentals, and don’t put a ceiling on their growth.”

Another goal is to expand such training in rural areas, where companies are building new megasites says Ford’s Blue Oval battery plant, says Amy Lee, president of the Michigan Workforce Training and Education Collaborative. The nonprofit helps these counties, which often don’t have community colleges nearby, partner with Detroit-area schools to create programs that may be offered online, after-school, or by traveling employers with equipment in tow.

EVs struggle to gain traction in the market

These various programs are designed to keep the state’s job market secure in the face of change. Even GM reorganized its engineering teams two years ago to respond to shifting dynamics in the industry, says Andy Oury, engineering technical leader for battery packs at GM. Previously, they thought of internal combustion engine (ICE) and EV engineers as separate. Now, those teams work together.

“We’re looking at things in terms of the physics, instead of just the parts,” Oury says. A mechanical engineer can think about what they’d do with an ICE engine, and do the opposite for EVs. “We’re really good at setting fuel on fire in a perfect way and combusting it,” he says. So for an EV: “How would you make things never catch fire?”

The flexibility is necessary given that GM has shifted its EV outlook many times. It delayed its electric truck plant in the Detroit area until 2026, and will miss its original target of a million EVs produced by 2025.

Meanwhile, the Blue Oval plant reduced its expected jobs from 2,500 to 1,700, as Ford recently canceled plans for an all-electric SUV. And some proposed plants for batteries and battery parts have been delayed due to local opposition and resulting litigation, some well into the 2030s.

U.S. consumer demand for EVs has been volatile, including in Michigan, where voters disapprove of Biden-Harris’ EV efforts by 55% to 40%. While EVs boast longer-term savings, upfront costs are an average 10% higher. At a bar in Warren near GM’s Technical Center, Bruce DuPont, a retired UPS driver who identified as Republican, complained about the cost of an EV. “If you can afford it, knock yourself out,” he said. “[But] don’t push it on me.”

Such concerns don’t just affect consumer demand, but also workforce enthusiasm, says a regional economic development official who asked to remain anonymous. “Auto is cyclical, and many families are used to that,” they say. “But if you’re not, why would you want to get into something that can lay you off next week?”

The Trump campaign has capitalized on the low enthusiasm. It has barraged TV broadcasts in Rust Belt states with millions of dollars of ads claiming that Kamala Harris wants “to end all gas-powered cars” and eliminate jobs. Harris did propose phasing out gas cars as a presidential candidate in 2019, but the White House’s current targets don’t amount to an “EV mandate,” the notion that EVs will be compulsory at the expense of ICE cars. “[Trump’s] campaign manager is Elon Musk,” Duggan adds, “so I don’t know if he could stay with the anti-electric vehicle platform!”

If Trump is reelected, he could handily shatter Biden’s progress; a Bloomberg report found it would be relatively easy for Trump to repeal the tailpipe emissions standards and undermine the EV tax credits. He has also signaled an inclination to kill a $500 million Biden grant to repurpose a GM plant for EVs in Lansing, which was expected to save 650 jobs.

No backpedaling on a clear trajectory

While the industry side has slowed down, the training continues—with the bonus that graduates may not have to work in the auto space at all.

“We’re looking at mobility from a much broader perspective than strictly EVs,” De La Fuente says. “It’s the movement of people, goods, and information,” even including fields like cybersecurity. Rouse says the skills students learn in Macomb’s automation program prepare them for defense and aeronautics careers just as much as EV careers.

GEM funds have also supported alternative mobility startups at Newlab, a 270,000-square-foot tech incubator at Detroit’s newly reopened Michigan Central. About half of the 103 startups are mobility companies, electrifying bikes, ATVs, and snowmobiles. “There are so many different angles that touch [mobility],” says Josh Sirefman, Michigan Central’s CEO. “If you look at the work here, it’s going to be more about the underlying technologies and capabilities—an application of electrification that has nothing to do with an automobile.”

One Newlab program that does involve autos is an apprentice certification for electric charger installation and maintenance, which has trained about 40 people so far, says Clarinda Bennett-Harrison, director of skills at Michigan Central. Though the state is “well behind” much of the country in its charging infrastructure, Mayor Duggan says, Detroit will ramp up charger placement over the next year thanks to a $23 million federal grant.

Abkenar doesn’t think the political struggle against EVs will last long. “At the end of the day, the consumers will decide if they have veto power,” he says. Even if EVs slow down, there will likely still be a demand for hybrids, which have surged in popularity this year.

He believes the transition to EVs is inevitable, even if it takes longer than expected. “When [the] Model T was introduced, you didn’t have a gas station on every corner,” he says. “Regardless of what the administration or Congress turns out to be, the movement has started. It’s not going to turn back.”

As it all irons out, the forward progress will keep happening in Michigan, says GM’s Oury. “We haven’t been in as transformational a period in the auto industry since the horse and buggy to internal combustion engine,” he says. “We’re at the precipice of something really exciting.”