Is it hard to get an engineering job in the car industry by 2011?

Question

I am a 2nd year mechanical engineering student at a top 5 engineering school in the US and i want to pursue my interest in cars. my dad and brother are discouraging me to be in this field as the layoffs are high in the automobile industry. i dun believe them because they are judging based on my cousin who is in his 40s without a real job in mechanical engineering.

I want to know if specializing in automotive engineering would be a good idea under mechanical engineering and that there would be enough jobs by 2011 in the automobile industry. Ideally, i want to work with designing or building cars. There is a program offered by my school where you learn and build F1 cars and raced them.

Answer this if you are an engineer or in the automobile industry like Ford, Chevrolet, Toyota, GM, etc.

Answer 1

You might have better luck designing horse and buggy outfits, as the world's economy will collapse under the weight of fuel prices.

The horse and buggy will be in large demand.

(This is said tongue in cheek, but it could be a reality if the globalists succeed.)

Answer 2

Hard to get a job; it depends on the economy and what companies survive the next few years.

Hard to get a job working and designing new internal combustion engines; almost impossible.

Bone up on your knowledge of electronics, the electric car is the future.  Ethanol, hydrogen, coal, natural gas, oil and gasoline power are all basically the same thing and you can adapt a diesel engine to run on all of them (you would have to gasify the coal of course).  While burning hydrogen makes no waste the others do and we can't afford those wastes.

The current demand for the hybrid shows the direction that the automobile industry has to take; but the American Auto Industry is slow to change, they still want to sell gas guzzling SUVS and use their more efficient engines to haul around more weight.

Electricity is more efficient and has more potential, we can create it more ways and through ways that will never be depleted.  The only current limit is battery technology, and when the price of the lithium battery comes down that will become the new standard.

The US Auto Industry will still be locked into the Internal Combustion Engine though with and ever decreasing demand.  Japan will make the adaption.  Germany has almost turned there entire national power grid to solar so they too will be willing to make the adaption.  Those countries will be selling more cars in the US than the native US dealers.  Those nations and their auto industries are nimble enough to make the change.

So how is your German, and how is your Japanese?  If you want a job in the auto industry in 4 years then stick with the current technology, but if you want a job in 10 years then you had better go electronic or you will find yourself obsolete.

You can take a cautious route though; the laws of aerodynamics won't change the need for safety and the requirements will only increase.  The design of suspension will improve, but only based on current technology.  All the other systems and design process that make up a car will remain the same and still be needed so I recommend that you abandon the internal combustion engine and specialize in all the other systems; especially aerodynamics for as electric cars take over that will become increasingly important.

If you look at a car from the 1950s and a car from the 1970s and a car from 2000 the biggest change you will notice is in their aerodynamics.  The seatbelt and air bag are more subtle design changes and were easier to do, but creating the car that can fly and still hug the road is a task that will be timeless.  Even in 100 years when the car may finally take off from the ground; aerodynamics will still be important.

In summation:

- Learn AutoCAD it is how the car will be designed and modeled, tested and first conceived.

- Learn Fluid Dynamics, the core to aerodynamics (air is considered a light fluid), that will always be a big part of car design and has been a huge improvement over the last 50 years.  It has been the biggest change in body styling and design.

- Consider learning Japanese or German and immigrating, because they will be at the cutting edge of the industry.

- Organic chemistry will give you knowledge about plastics and how they are made.

- Structures and dynamics will tell you how to make the car strong and stand up.

- The strength of materials will tell you how to make some of the materials in the car.

- Electronics will be the cutting edge.

- The Japanese and the Germans will be doing it.

No I am not an engineer, but I know the field.  My father was a mechanical engineer and spent his entire career as a safety engineer working on spacecraft with Boeing and NASA.  He was a rocket scientist but didn’t take rocket science in school; in fact it wasn’t even a field when he was studying.  He joined the space industry soon after the time when more rockets exploded on the pad than took off and a manned spaceflight was a wild flight of fancy.

Take the apprentice for designing the F1 cars; experience like that is invaluable and what companies are looking for.  Racing has always been the cutting edge of auto design.  It shows your true commitment to the auto industry.

Don't specialize in the internal combustion engine though it will be replaced.

Answer 3

Do some research on google. 30 seconds found the link below. A good engineer can do his own research.

Answer 4

okay am not in the auto industry, am in ma 4th year mech eng here in Canada, and am currently working at Boeing, and i'll tell you something rite now, your dad and brother are 100 percent rite. Those guyz lay off more than those in the aerospace industry, i've met quite a few of them, haven't u heard of GM and all the strikes every time, why do u think that is it?...cos all their asses have been laid off.

2ndly, with the rising gas prices, i read on the news in the states there's gonna be like a 7 percent decrease in vehicles that will be on the road.(not sure of the particular number though but def a decrease) in canada not so much.so chances are there won't be looking for auto engineers any time soon, but that can work in ur favour too if there's gonna be more manufacture of green/hydrogen cars, considering the fact California just opened its first Hydrogen station 3 days ago. But again, green/hydrogen cars actually cost more to build than regular prices and the total manufacturing cycle even to disposal actually leaves more carbon footprint than normal cars. So you can see, the auto industry is very fluid and very unpredictable, and trust me so is the F1 industry.

I'll tell you something that never changes and that''s ENERGY GENERATION. not that its ma business, but i'll advice you to go there.