But Chicago-area Ford, Chrysler plants are going strong after shifting to SUVs
While GM is cutting 14,000 jobs and idling five factories amid sliding sedan sales, Chicago-area auto plants are hitting on all cylinders after shifting to SUV production.
Fiat Chrysler Automobiles’ Belvidere Assembly Plant, near Rockford, switched over to the Jeep Cherokee last year. Ford’s Chicago Assembly Plant is phasing out the Taurus sedan in the spring to build the new Lincoln Aviator SUV alongside the Ford Explorers that have rolled off the line there since 2010.
Nearly 10,000 employees are working at the two plants, both of which operate on multiple shifts.
Meanwhile, startup manufacturer Rivian Automotive is gearing up to build electric trucks and SUVs at a former Mitsubishi plant in the central Illinois city of Normal beginning in 2020.
All three Illinois plants are positioned to take advantage of current consumer trends: SUVs surpassed cars in 2016 and now account for nearly half of all vehicle sales, according to IHS Markit automotive industry research. But a future that could include selfdriving cars built by robots portends more challenges down the road.
Electric and self-driving vehicles may make the current lineup of SUVs as cutting edge as a 1970s-era conversion van. For thousands of employees at Chi- cago-area auto plants, a greater concern may be who will build the car of the future.
Some experts are not sure that current autoworkers will have the skills needed in the future assembly process.
“Being really good at something that is not really useful to do isn’t a really good ticket to the future,” said Michael Hicks, an economics professor and manufacturing expert at Ball State University. “The unemployment lines are full of people really good at skills that can be done very cheaply elsewhere or are automatable.”
Here’s a look at the state of auto manufacturing in Illinois.
Ford’s Chicago Assembly Plant
Ford Current products: Taurus and Explorer
2019 production: Ford Explorer and Lincoln Aviator SUVs
At Ford, trucks and SUVs account for more than 80 percent of sales. That percentage is likely to grow after discontinuing all of its sedans but the Mustang and Fusion.
“People are moving out of cars and into SUVs, and it’s really picked up steam over the last four or five years,” said Erich Merkle, Ford’s U.S. sales analyst.
Merkle said SUVs are gaining traction among both aging baby boomers, who find it easier to get into and out of the vehicles, and aging millennials, who need the room for their growing families.
The Chicago Assembly Plant on Torrence Avenue, Ford’s oldest plant in continuous operation, is shifting to an all-SUV lineup next year.
By March, the Taurus, long built at the Southeast Side facility, will be out of production. The plant then will begin gearing up to build a new vehicle — the 2020 Lincoln Aviator SUV — along with an all-new version of the Ford Explorer and the police version of the SUV.
The plant, which employs 4,400 workers, has been operating on three shifts this year, turning out about 313,000 Explorers and 44,000 Taurus sedans through November, according to Ford.
The transformation to the Aviator will require some temporary down time, Ford spokeswoman Kelli Felker said. During this period, idled hourly employees with more than one year of seniority will receive approximately 75 percent of their pay until the plant resumes operation with the new line.
Felker said no changes are planned for the size of the plant’s workforce next year, with the current workers keeping their jobs to build the new SUVs.
The Torrence Avenue plant has been producing the Taurus since the “jelly bean” sedan debuted in 1986. But the focus has been on SUVs since 2010, when production of the Explorer moved to Chicago from Louisville, Ky.
The Chicago plant, which made the Model T when it opened in 1924, underwent a $400 million modernization in 2004, with an additional $180 million investment when it began SUV production in 2010.
Ford did not disclose the projected cost of the plant’s retooling next year to accommodate the new SUV products.
Meanwhile, the automaker recently unveiled its Advanced Manufacturing Center in Redford Township, Mich., featuring futuristic technologies to improve the assembly process. One of the innovations, collaborative robots, are already taking their place in auto plants, performing some strenuous and repetitive tasks more efficiently than their human counterparts.
That may make some assembly jobs obsolete, but Felker said robots will change the work people do rather than replace them.
“We don’t see the future where it’s a plant full of robots,” she said. “We believe it will be robots and people working together.”
Felker said Ford is committed to retraining displaced workers to handle new, more complex responsibilities, such as learning programming and tending to the robots.
Rivian Automotive, Normal, Ill.
Current products: None. Electric trucks and SUVs are set to go into production in 2020.
Founded in 2009, Rivian employs about 600 people between its Michigan headquarters; technology and engineering operations in California, and the Mitsubi- shi plant in Normal, which the company bought for $16 million from a liquidation firm in January 2017.
Once a hotbed of activity, the Mitsibushi plant ended production in 2015 after years of dwindling sales.
About 60 employees are “prepping” the Normal plant for production, a number that is expected to reach 465 when the first vehicles begin to roll off the line in late 2020, Rivian spokesman Michael McHale said.
Rivian is in line to receive $49.2 million in state tax credits over 15 years if it meets employment and investment targets for the Normal facility. Those goals include creating 1,000 new jobs by 2024.
The company has set an annual target of 20,000 to 25,000 vehicles over the first two years of production, with the capacity to ramp up to 250,000 vehicles per year, McHale said.
Rivian unveiled the R1T electric pickup truck and R1S SUV in November at the Los Angeles auto show. Built on a “skateboard” platform, the design features four electric motors that push the vehicles from zero to 60 mph in about three seconds, with a charge that can last up to 400 miles.
The Rivian truck is expected to retail for $61,500, while the SUV will run $65,000 — after a $7,500 federal tax credit for electric vehicles.
Mi t s u b i s h i Mo t o r s opened the Normal plant in 1988 as a joint venture with Chrysler, producing sport coupes and later, sedans. In its heyday, the Normal plant produced more than 200,000 vehicles per year, wh i l e staffing levels reached about 4,000. Before it shut down, the plant was producing the Outlander Sport compact SUV.
McHale said the community, hard hit by the plant’s closure, is happy to see the lights back on, with some former employees already finding work with the new automaker.
“Manufacturing was at the heart of the town, that Mitsubishi plant,” McHale said. “It’s nice to be back,