IEEE Spectrum January, 2014 - 28

sHOuld yOu mOve intO
mecHatrOnics?
rEtiring workErs anD morE
complEx cars crEatE oppor-
tunitiEs in thE auto inDustry

iming is everything. Five years
ago this month, I drafted an article
for IEEE Spectrum on the need for
thousands of new engineers in the U.S. auto industry, as many of its white-collar employees approached retirement.
Then the industry went off a cliff. Years of mismanagement and the severe impact of the Great
Recession led to the 2009 bankruptcy and federally backed restructuring of General Motors
and Chrysler. The article never ran.
Yet the main point remains valid: More than
one in three U.S. auto-industry engineers in
2008 were baby boomers, and during the economic crisis, many of those engineers retired
early. Meanwhile, the U.S. industry recovered
and resumed hiring, and it hasn't stopped.
The Center for Automotive Research (CAR),
a group funded by the automobile industry in
Ann Arbor, Mich., said last year that it expected
carmakers overall to add 35 000 jobs and suppliers another 44 000. Last July, for example,
Ford Motor Co. said it would hire 3000 salaried

jan 2014

norTh aMerIcan

UnDeR The hOOD: U.S. automakers need engineers who can work across multiple disciplines, but
it's been difficult to attract young talent.

employees-800 more than planned-of whom
four-fifths would be technical professionals in
product development, manufacturing, quality
assurance, purchasing, and IT.
Many engineers hired into the auto industry will
need backgrounds in "mechatronics"-a combination of mechanical, electrical, and software
engineering required for the integration of increasingly sophisticated electrical and mechanical equipment found in automobiles. Those skills
are "highly sought after, and that talent pool isn't
growing," said Mark Roberts, GM's director of talent acquisition for North America, in 2009. And
nothing's changed since then, says Kristin Dziczek,
director of CAR's industry and labor group.
The most desirable new engineers have handson experience building vehicles or subsystems.
Historically, Detroit's automakers have hired from
engineering competitions like EcoCar2 (or its

sPecTruM.Ieee.orG

predecessor, Challenge X), in which students
modify a production vehicle to make it environmentally friendlier. Similarly, in the Solar Car Challenge and the Formula SAE competition, student
teams design, build, and race lightweight solarpowered cars or single-seat race cars.
But student contestants are a drop in the bucket.
As automakers cast a wider net among engineering graduates, they're finding a new reality: "We are
not the employer of choice," one company told
Dziczek. "This isn't where the action is."
The industry faces a triple whammy, Dziczek
says. First, students doubt that auto industry
jobs are secure. And for many, Michigan and
the Midwest are simply not as appealing as, say,
California. Finally, the jobs and challenges themselves aren't seen as exciting.
Detroit's image in particular doesn't help. In
the 2000s, a messy sex-and-perjury scandal
sent the city's former mayor to jail. The current
bankruptcy of the city of Detroit is the latest
blow. But recruiters are trying to counter this by
underscoring the global nature of the industry,
as automakers share platforms and architectures among vehicles built all over the world.
"You may be willing to live in Michigan if you
get a chance to work in Australia or China," GM's
Roberts pointed out. Today, GM runs engineering and design centers in North America, South
America, Europe, China, and South Korea.
Dziczek also sees promise in the allure of
cutting-edge automotive technologies. Emerging
efforts to build green, connected, and autonomous
automobiles pose technical challenges that she
believes newly minted engineers find appealing.
Stanford University's efforts in autonomous
vehicles, along with Google's self-driving car
prototypes, have raised the visibility of auto tech.
Global automakers-including BMW, Daimler,
Ford, General Motors, Nissan, Toyota, and
Volkswagen-have opened and expanded Silicon
Valley outposts to scout technologies from outside the auto industry. They are working on the
challenges of integrating consumer electronic
devices-with a typical 18-month product cycle-
into vehicles that must last 15 years or more.
Can Detroit and the U.S. automotive industry
drum up its cool factor? Will engineering students buy the argument that automakers offer
fun projects? Dziczek says that it will take work-
but she's more optimistic today than she was
five years ago. -JOhn VOeLCKeR
phOTOGRAph By

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aDvancED vEhiclE tEchnology compEtitions

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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Spectrum January, 2014