UC Davis Institute of Transportation Studies

Onshoring vehicle manufacturing in the US has potential for economic development and increased security of manufacturing supply chains. Onshoring may also have social benefits if production processes are moved from countries with low wages and few protections for worker safety to the US., where wages are higher and labor protection is extensive. This project examines the potential social benefits of moving one part of the vehicle supply chain, batteries for heavy duty trucks, from China to the US. We use a life cycle approach and consider the resource extraction and manufacturing phases of battery production. We assume that only the manufacturing phase changes. We use specialized software to compare estimates of social risks in five categories (labor rights, health and safety, society, governance, and community), Our results suggest that relocating battery manufacturing from China to the US would substantially reduce associated social risks particularly with respect to labor rights, health and safety, and governance. Given the potentially significant environmental and social benefits to shifting heavy-duty truck manufacturing from China to the US, a next step would be to evaluate the economic feasibility of onshoring and identify policies that could incentivize such a shift.