The clean car revolution is breaking old industrial towns

BARCELONA: Patricia Notario’s life started unravelling when she first heard rumours that Nissan Motor Co would shutter its car factories in Barcelona.

It was in the midst of Spain’s state of emergency to contain the coronavirus, and the 36-year-old and her partner, also a Nissan employee, were confined to their home like millions of others.

The couple had put all their savings into a new apartment a few months earlier and were awaiting a decision about their mortgage.

After the carmaker – which has been building vehicles at the site since before Notario was born – confirmed the news in late May, the fallout was brutal.

The bank rejected the couple’s loan application, the owner balked at returning their €40,000

(US$45,000) down payment, and the temporary housing the couple had rented until they could move into their new home turned into a type of limbo.

“Our future is black,” said Notario, staring at a blank TV screen.

She’s not alone. About 25,000 workers in the Spanish industrial hub have their livelihoods on the line.

It’s a scene that could play out in car towns around the world as the coronavirus crisis accelerates a structural shift in the overcrowded, fast-changing auto industry.

Nissan’s decision to shut down its three plants in the scrubby hills outside Barcelona is part of a broader reorganisation with alliance partners Renault SA and Mitsubishi Motors Corp, which involves cutting global production by 20%.

The move is linked to the broader strains facing the sector as the era of the combustion engine gradually draws to a close.

“The transformation of the auto industry is unstoppable, it’s a new industrial revolution, and the only alternative is to adapt or die,” said Tomas Diaz, a Nissan worker and an official with the Comissions Obreres union in the

Catalonia region.

“Today is Nissan, but tomorrow it can be any other plant.”

Car sales are plunging, and a recovery is expected to be long and slow. The prospects for traditional vehicles are particularly gloomy.

Major economies, accounting for 13% of global car deliveries, have committed to phase out diesel and gasoline engines, some as early as 2025.

An 87% decline in battery prices in the past decade and a green push by the European Union will drive electric car sales up in Europe from just over half a million last year to two million in 2025, Bloomberg NEF predicts.

Car plants, long a provider of middle-class incomes for blue-collar workers, are being separated into two classes: those with a future in the electric world and those that will be sidelined sooner or later.

If nothing changes, Notario, her partner and Spain’s other 600,000 auto workers will be left out of the green jobs revolution.

While some electric models are assembled in Europe’s second-biggest auto producer, all of the region’s electric-car supply chain is concentrated in northern Europe and Asia, where the batteries are developed.

“You could see the factory had less production,” said Notario, as her 11-year-old son plays video games in the next room.

“We never had the feeling the plant would close.”

Workers have been on indefinite strike since early May.

They gather for weekly updates outside Nissan’s Montcada i Reixac plant – a stamping facility that supplies nearby factories, effectively halting all the company’s operations in the area. Signs of anger are everywhere.

A tower with the Nissan logo is stained with red paint. Along the factory fence, workers hung uniforms smeared with slogans such as “our virus is the closure” and “worker for sale.”