They had just won a raise after the United Auto Workers strike, and they were due to start building GM’s electric Chevy Silverado. Then, in December, GM told nearly 1,000 workers at its Orion Assembly plant outside Detroit that they were being laid off until late 2025. “It’s been a very somber moment here the last month,” one employee told NBC News, speaking anonymously because GM had not authorized the interview.
That was the human side of the shift to electric cars as it looked in early 2024. Ford said in January it would cut back production of its electric F-150 Lightning, taking 1,400 workers off the line in Dearborn, Michigan, from April. Most would be reassigned within the complex, moved to plants that build gasoline vehicles, or offered early retirement.
Demand cooled, jobs wobbled
The cause was not a collapse. Cox Automotive counted a record 317,000 EVs sold in the fourth quarter of 2023, up 40% on the year before. But in 2021 and 2022 sales had been growing 70% and 80% a year, and the slower pace left automakers with plans that were too big. Alan Amici, CEO of the Center for Automotive Research, put it plainly: buyers find EVs expensive and worry about charging.
The autoworkers’ new contract gave them some cushion. They had won a raise of more than 25% after a strike of more than a month, and the deal makes it easier for laid-off workers to move to EV battery plants and offers early-retirement incentives if automakers shrink. “The UAW had first and foremost on their mind job security,” said Art Wheaton of Cornell University. For UAW members at GM who are not reassigned, the company said it would pay, on top of state unemployment, an amount equal to 84% of normal pay, plus health care, for up to two years.
What the oil numbers say
Look at the whole world and the picture is bigger. The International Energy Agency’s Global EV Outlook 2026, as reported by ThisDay, says EV sales rose 20 per cent in 2025 to pass 20 million for the first time. One in every four new cars sold worldwide was electric.
The effect on oil is already measurable. The IEA estimated that EVs displaced 1.7 million barrels of oil per day in 2025, and expects that to almost triple to around 5 million barrels per day by 2030. Transport accounts for nearly half of global oil demand.
The countries differ sharply. Electric vehicles made up nearly 55 per cent of new cars in China, but just under 10 per cent in the United States, where sales were largely flat. In the first quarter of 2026, global sales fell 8 per cent from a year earlier to 3.9 million units, which the IEA put down mainly to policy-related slowdowns in China and the United States.
The grid will feel it too. Electricity demand from EVs could exceed 1,500 terawatt-hours by 2035, a sixfold increase, though the IEA says that would add only about 4 per cent to total global electricity demand.
Sources
- Report: Electric Vehicles Cut Global Oil Demand by 1.7m bpd as Sales Top 20m (ThisDay, Nigeria)
- As electric vehicle demand slows, workers caught in the middle face an uncertain future (NBC News)
