Electric-Vehicle Industry Could Add 24,000 Jobs : Employment: Study sees potential to blunt losses in Southland defense work and ultimately create a ‘major new industrial district.’

An electric-vehicle industry could create 24,000 jobs in Southern California and help revive the region’s role as a high-tech manufacturing center, according to a study to be released today by UCLA researchers.

The report is the first detailed analysis of the potential economic impact of an electric-vehicle components industry, an idea much touted by politicians and business leaders as one way to counter job losses in aerospace and defense manufacturing.

Although the 24,000 jobs would make up only a small part of the more than 221,400 manufacturing jobs estimated to have been lost in Los Angeles County since 1988, they have significance beyond their numbers, according to the report.

An electric-vehicle business could lead to development in Los Angeles of a much larger “major new industrial district” to build advanced transportation equipment, including mass-transit rail cars, high-speed magnetic-levitation trains and traffic management systems, the researchers conclude. That, in turn, could further encourage an even wider group of high-tech companies and their workers to remain in the region instead of moving to other manufacturing centers.

“You try to set in motion a process that continues to grow over time,” said Allen J. Scott, director of UCLA’s Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies and leader of the research team of eight urban planners, economists and environmentalists.

“When we talk about 24,000 jobs,” Scott said, “that really is a snapshot of the process that will develop over many years.”

The report is likely to be welcomed by business, political and environmental leaders.

“That kind of industry could be a phoenix rising from the ashes,” said Lloyd Greif, president of Greif & Co., a Los Angeles-based investment bank that provides corporate financial services to emerging companies.

This is the second report on electric vehicles from the Lewis Center.

In 1991, the center studied the outlook for fostering an alternative-fuel transportation industry in Southern California. That report concluded that electric vehicles were better suited for manufacturing in the region than methanol, natural-gas or other alternative-fuel vehicles.

The new report notes that Southern California already boasts facilities and conditions that would support electric-vehicle manufacturing--”ranging from automobile design centers to large numbers of small mechanical firms to the entire complex of firms and suppliers forming the aerospace industry. . . .”

But an industry will not develop on its own, the report warns, noting that “despite this optimistic assessment, it would be a major error to presume that Southern California’s ascent to mastery of electric-vehicle production is now assured.” The authors cite “extremely serious competition” for the industry from auto makers elsewhere in North America, Japan and Western Europe.

The study’s recommendations include the rapid adoption of policies by public officials and business leaders to encourage investment in companies that could build electric-vehicle components, as well as construction of infrastructure facilities such as sites for crash tests. A more formidable task is the study’s proposal that policy-makers attempt to lure to Southern California one or more manufacturing plants owned by a major auto maker.

The report also recommends that businesses form networks like those common in Japanese industry, in which manufacturers and their suppliers work cooperatively. Calstart--a consortium of more than 50 public and private companies, research institutions and government agencies--is praised in the report as a step in the right direction. Calstart’s goal is to promote an advanced transportation industry in the state.

“Calstart is a sort of embryo of what we have in mind,” Scott said.

Calstart, based in Burbank, has made its own, larger estimate of the jobs that could be created by an electric-vehicle industry. It predicts that 55,000 direct and indirect jobs would be produced.

“I think I am more optimistic about the job creation,” said Lon E. Bell, a founder of Calstart and president of Amerigon Inc., a small high-tech manufacturing firm. “I believe that in the initial production of electric vehicles, the labor content will be higher and that the market will be larger than most people believe today.”

Otherwise, Bell, who was a member of the study’s technical advisory board, commended the report.

“It’s based on a great deal of historical perspective and a deep understanding of industrial transfer and industrial creation,” he said.

The report was sponsored by Bank of America, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, Southern California Edison Co., the UC Berkeley Transportation Center, the United Parcel Service Foundation and Volvo North America Corp.

Going Electric

An electric-vehicle manufacturing industry could play a key role in revitalizing the Los Angeles area’s economy, according to a study by UCLA researchers. The report urges California’s political and business leaders to promptly develop policies that encourage:

* Collaborative manufacturing networks similar to those that Japanese manufacturers and their suppliers have formed.

* Major U.S. or foreign auto makers to build vehicle-manufacturing facilities in Los Angeles.

* Investment in crash-test sites or other facilities that would support an electric-vehicle industry.

* Public funding for job retraining for aerospace and defense workers to work on electric vehicles.

* Continued public investment in electric-vehicle technology-- spurred by a new private-public investment fund.

* More government support, such as tax rebates for car buyers, to help build a market for electric vehicles.

Source: Electric Vehicle Manufacturing in Southern California: Current Developments, Future Prospects; the Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies