Electric engines require virtually no maintenance, so fewer mechanics, autonomous cars will reduce the number of drivers, including taxis for example, or even fuel-related trades (such as service stations). We will therefore have to anticipate and propose alternatives, we are talking about nearly 4 million jobs at risk in Europe.
Jean-Baptiste Djebbari, former Minister of Transport, also evokes the challenge of improving the working conditions of the most precarious jobs: “There was a very big development of home delivery services during the Covid crisis, because of the confinements and, at that time, there was a very big deregulation of the sector, such as regulatory subjects, security, training and social representation.”
The potential disappearance of many positions is reminiscent of the appearance of information technology which eliminated millions of jobs in the 1980s, in particular of shorthand typists, but generated others as a replacement. For transport, new professions, in particular concerning the production and distribution of renewable energies, will make it possible to make up for the employment deficit.
“We really need to stand out on the subjects of electric vehicles, hydrogen vehicles, vehicle connectivity, and energy production, which are all obviously linked. On these subjects, France has a lot of assets and human skills.”
Jean-Baptiste Djebbari, former Minister of Transportat franceinfo
Advances to which we respond mainly through training and recruitment. In the meantime, half a million jobs are to be filled in the transport sector, in particular truck drivers, a job that should be made more attractive and better paid.
For Bertrand Piccard, President of the Solar Impulse Foundation, recruitment depends above all on training: “We should introduce something that already exists in China and Switzerland, but little in France: apprenticeship. We need to value manual trades, because we fundamentally need them, and they are beautiful trades.”
Other professions, such as those related to aeronautics, are also to be reinvested through dreams, with aircraft that are more respectful of the environment. If you want to become a pilot, now is the time! And as Saint-Exupéry said: “Make your life a dream, and your dreams, a reality”.