The Ford Motor Company is shedding around 3,800 jobs in product development and administration across Europe as the U.S. automaker cuts global costs to be more competitive in the electric vehicle market.

One in nine jobs will be lost including 2,300 at the carmaker's Cologne and Aachen sites in Germany, 1,300 in the UK and 200 in the rest of Europe.

The U.S. group will retain around 3,400 engineers in Europe, while cuts in the UK, which amount to one in five of the workforce there, will be mostly at the carmaker's research center in Dunton, southeast England.

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The cuts in Germany equate to around 12% of the workforce.

Ford said it intended to achieve the job reductions through voluntary programs.

The carmaker’s European staff were last hit by job cuts in 2019 and 2020 as Ford worked to achieve a 6% operating margin in the region, a goal thrown off course by the pandemic, with pretax profit margins in Europe in the first nine months of 2022 at just 2.2% of sales.

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Currently, the Michigan-based manufacturer is spending $50 billion to electrifying its product range, pivoting to a slimmer lineup with higher prices to compensate for rising costs of producing electric cars.

Reuters contributed to this report.