Prospective mechanics look to the future with EV technician programs
Behind Bob is a hybrid car battery. It’s about 12 times the size of a regular car battery, extremely heavy, with a “danger high voltage” sign resting on top.
“ The biggest part about this class is learning the safety procedures, because this high voltage is very dangerous,” Bob said. “ So learning the safety procedures, what PPE to wear, how to disable the system so it’s safe to work on…”
Growing curriculums
UTI’s electric hybrid class curriculum is one of the first ones from a private for-profit trade school in Texas and is relatively new. Instructors like Bob flew to the UTI campus in Long Beach, Calif., for instruction.
Like a lot of trade programs, the curriculum is informed by industry partners. It’s a way to keep the knowledge up to date of what future employers are looking for in potential hires.
Tess Dubois-Carey is the president of UTI in Sacramento, Calif., where the program first launched in 2023.
“That’s why we have the partnerships that we do and employers that offer things like our tuition reimbursement incentive plan and things along those lines where they’re looking to attract our graduates to come and work for them,” Dubois-Carey said.
Back in Texas, there is another school where a focus on hybrid and EV learning has made its way into the curriculum.
Northeast Texas Community College in Mount Pleasant is just over an hour west of Texarkana and a couple hours east of Dallas. With just a population of over 16,000 in the city, its not the first place one thinks of when talking about EVs, but within the last few years the community college became the first in the nation to offer the EV certificate program.
Zachary Strawbridge is an instructor in the Carroll Shelby Automotive Program on campus.
“ We always try to strive to be on the cutting edge of what the industry is asking for as far as what the entry-level mechanics need to know,” Strawbridge said.
“And as the hybrid and EV market share of vehicles keeps getting larger and larger, we’ve been trying to introduce more and more of it so that our technicians that we’re training could come out of college in the best possible position to be successful in the industry.”
To help write the curriculum, the program partnered with LegacyEV, a company specializing in electric vehicle components and education out of Arizona.
» GET MORE NEWS FROM AROUND THE STATE: Sign up for Texas Standard’s weekly newsletters
Strawbridge said despite their rural location and community college designation, the goal of the program isn’t confined to its city limits.
“ We have students who come from all over the state and even outside of the state,” he said. “So we’re trying to make sure that we give them the information they need to be successful whenever they do go back home to wherever they’re going to be working at.”
It’s no secret that a big issue hindering the electric vehicle market in Texas is the infrastructure, specifically a lack of charging stations. But with an EV charging station factory opening its doors in Fort Worth, the possibility of seeing more EVs and hybrids on the road outside of big cities seems plausible.
”Within the next 5 to 10 years, we should be seeing that more in our local areas,” Strawbridge said.