More Car Manufacturing Jobs Move South to Mexico

Overview

This June 15, 2015 article, written by Alisa Priddle and Brent Snavely of the Detroit Free Press and carried by USA Today, examines where the North American auto industry was choosing to build its next plants. Drawing on WardsAuto production data, Center for Automotive Research investment tallies, and interviews with industry analysts, it answers a simple question: as automakers add capacity, who wins? The answer is Mexico first, the U.S. South second, and Canada last.

Key Findings

• Mexico built about one in five North American vehicles in 2014, or 3.2 million of a 16.9 million total, up from 1.4 million and a 9 percent share in 2004. The U.S. share slipped from 74 percent to 67 percent over the same decade, and Canada fell from 17 percent to 14 percent.
• WardsAuto projected Mexico would reach one in four vehicles by 2020 in an 18.6 million-unit market, with the U.S. holding about two-thirds at 12.2 million and Canada sliding to 1.6 million, or 9 percent.
• Automakers announced $18.25 billion of new North American investment in 2014: almost $10.5 billion in the United States, $7 billion in Mexico, and a single $750 million project in Canada.
• Mexico already had 18 assembly plants with at least five more planned or under construction, and nearly every major automaker, including GM, Ford, Toyota, Honda, Volkswagen, Audi, BMW, Hyundai, and Mazda, was adding capacity there. Its auto workforce grew 40 percent since 2008 to 675,000, versus 15 percent growth in the U.S. to more than 900,000.
• Mexico’s trade agreements with 45 countries, compared with about 20 for the U.S., make it an export base for Europe and South America as well as North America.
• Inside the U.S., northern plants were adding third shifts while the South was getting new plants. IHS Automotive expected southern capacity to reach about 5 million units by 2019, approaching the Midwest’s more than 6 million.
• Analyst Dennis DesRosiers summarized the shift bluntly: “The U.S.’ South and Mexico are winning the battle.”

Why It Matters for Daylighting

Every one of the plants counted in this article is a new roof. An assembly plant and its body, paint, and stamping shops can cover several million square feet under a single high-bay structure, and the tier-one and tier-two suppliers that cluster around each plant add dozens more warehouses and component factories. That construction wave, concentrated in Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia, South Carolina, Texas, and central Mexico, represents some of the largest single opportunities for toplighting in North America. These are sunny latitudes, the buildings are tall and open, and much of the floor is occupied around the clock by workers doing visually demanding tasks.

Energy codes make the case even before the payback math does. Since the 2012 IECC and ASHRAE 90.1-2010, U.S. commercial codes have required daylight-responsive controls and, in large enclosed spaces such as manufacturing floors and warehouses with high ceilings, a minimum skylight area, subject to climate and occupancy exceptions. Southern states adopting those codes were doing so just as this plant investment arrived. Prismatic skylights meet the requirement while spreading glare-free daylight across the line, and specifying fall-protection screens with them keeps the roof safe for the maintenance traffic a plant generates. For suppliers building in Mexico under different codes, the same skylights offer a straightforward way to cut a plant’s largest daytime electrical load in a market where energy costs are a primary site-selection factor.

About the Source

USA Today is the national daily newspaper of Gannett, which also owns the Detroit Free Press, the newspaper whose auto-industry reporters Alisa Priddle and Brent Snavely wrote this story. It was published June 15, 2015; the library copy is a four-page browser printout dated June 21, 2015, of which roughly three pages are article text and the rest are site navigation. The full article, with its production charts and plant maps, remains available on USA Today’s website.