Hacker News Reader

Comment by bryanlarsen | Hacker News Reader

Labor is under 10% of the cost of an electric car.

Is there a source on this? And is this the labor cost for the final product, or also that of all components?

The UAW puts it at 5-8%. Other sources put it higher, up to about 15%. But that's for combustion vehicles -- most sources put the labor component of EV's at 40-60% of that of combustion vehicles.

It generally includes the labor for sub-assemblies, but not for components. Components are sourced globally, so manufacturers in different countries should not be paying substantially different prices for components. Certainly sometimes they do, but that's generally a tariff issue, not a labor issue.

Not an expert, this is just based on most of an hour of random Googling.

Does labor include healthcare and pension costs?

A high school teacher once told me that the most expensive part of a car is healthcare and pension costs. Road and Track reported on this a little while ago, no idea what the situation is today.

https://www.roadandtrack.com/car-culture/a9590/pension-costs...

Although this may be true (I haven't found much to the contrary in a few minutes of searching", "raw materials" also involve labor. Facilities in the US are bound to cost more as well because property is so much more expensive. US auto workers and engineers make easily 10x as much as Chinese counterparts.

labor is 100% of the cost of everything. not 100% of the price, as that includes things like profit margins and taxes, but 100% of the cost.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com