September 3, 2019—Long Beach City College in California is now offering a class diving into electric and hybrid vehicles, reports The Grunion.
According to the Institute of the Motor Industry, as many as 97 percent of active auto technicians aren’t qualified to work on electric cars, leaving 3 percent as the only technicians that are qualified. And this 3 percent is mostly employed at a manufacturer dealership.
“We have $2 million worth of new equipment thanks to grants,” said Gene Carbonaro, dean of career and technical education. “It has been a total transformation. We had equipment from the ’60s and ’70s in our shop and now we have computers in the labs and the shops that have the latest wiring diagrams and service information for each vehicle.”
Greg Ling, the professor of the class, said students will be working on top-of-the-line cars, including Mitsubishi’s H-PEVs (hybrid-plug in electric vehicles), a Tesla S, Nissan Leaf, Toyota Prius, Honda Civic, which runs on compressed natural gas, and three large engines that are on Long Beach Transit’s electric bus fleet.
Automotive 271: Intro to Electric and Hybrid Vehicles is starting in two weeks on the community college’s Pacific Coast campus.
