California isn’t Missouri or Kansas. But our manufacturing future is electric vehicles

California’s decision to ban the sale of new gas-powered cars after 2035 is yet another powerful signal that a changing climate will change the way we drive, and soon.

Your gas-guzzler won’t disappear tomorrow, but the formal decision by California, one of the world’s largest car markets, is further evidence that transportation’s future is electric. Major car and truck makers have acknowledged this reality, and are moving, some more quickly than others, into the EV world.

General Motors, whose Fairfax plant is in Kansas City, Kansas, says it will only make electric vehicles by 2035. Bill Ford, executive chairman of Ford Motor Company, whose Claycomo plant employs 7,000 workers, says the firm will be “all electric” within a generation.

The recently-signed Inflation Reduction Act promises to spend $369 billion on climate programs over the next 10 years, including efforts to boost the EV market. It contains tax and manufacturing credits designed to make the cars and trucks more affordable.

All of these developments are welcome. Lakes and rivers are drying up across the globe. Extreme weather events are common. Excessive heat threatens health and safety. Climate change is a fact, and not seriously debatable.

Gas-powered vehicles that belch carbon dioxide and other pollutants are a major cause of climate change. Each year, the Environmental Protection Agency says, the typical vehicle with an internal combustion engine emits 4.6 metric tons of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas. Those cars will eventually disappear.

Yet the transition to electric cars and trucks will not be easy. Our region must keep a close eye on the move to EVs, and what it might mean for two of the area’s biggest employers: the GM Fairfax plant and Ford’s Claycomo facility.

The Claycomo plant makes the F-150 pickup truck, the Transit multi-purpose van, and — beginning this year — the E-Transit, an electric version of the van. “The demand for that is sky high,” Bill Ford recently told Fortune magazine.

Ford spent $100 million upgrading Claycomo for the E-Transit vehicle.

Maintaining Claycomo’s economic health is essential. To its credit, Missouri has supported that growth: More than a decade ago, after a long special session of the legislature, the state provided Ford with $150 million in tax credits to save the plant. The facility was modernized, and remains a major area employer.

The future at GM’s Fairfax plant is more cloudy.

Fairfax employs about 2,100 people making the Malibu midsize sedan and the Cadillac XT4. Both are gas-powered vehicles.

General Motors is accelerating EV production schedules, and just announced a $7 billion investment in EVs in Michigan. But a recent trade publication story said there is no evidence the company plans to retool Fairfax for EVs. In fact, the factory has an “uncertain future,” according to the report.

Fairfax workers are paying attention, although they haven’t heard much. “Right now, we’re making the Malibu and the Cadillac. They’re gas,” Clarence Brown, president of United Auto Workers Local 31 at Fairfax, told the editorial board Thursday.

“We’re going to try to find out what the future is,” he said, “so we can deal with it.”

Late Thursday, GM spokesman Brian Harvey said the company and California “have a shared vision of an all-electric future.” At the same time, he said in an email, “We won’t speculate on how our commitment to an all-electric future will impact any individual manufacturing facility, including Fairfax Assembly.”

The news is not completely discouraging. Panasonic’s decision to build a massive battery plant near De Soto suggests a belief that there will be a local demand for automotive batteries in the future. That could mean GM, and Fairfax.

We endorsed Kansas’ decision to extend $800 million in subsidies to the $4 billion battery plant, although we remain concerned about pollution challenges there, and the secrecy surrounding the project. We also think hiring goals in construction and operation of the plant should be inclusive and transparent.

But governments must be willing to protect local jobs as the transition to electric power picks up, um, steam. EVs are essential in the effort to reduce climate change, and we must do as much as is possible and reasonable to promote their manufacture. That’s going to mean big investments in the infrastructure necessary to power that future, including strengthening the electric grid and securing the pipeline for rare earth metals needed for batteries.

But it also means helping GM Fairfax if necessary, and other businesses building our electric future retrofit both their plants and their workforces.