Electric Vehicles

The Center of Workforce Innovation for Renewable Energy has selected the Electric Vehicle pathway as an important pathway emerging in New Jersey. The State’s Energy Master Plan established a goal for New Jersey to register 330,000 electric vehicles by 2025 (as of December 2021, there were only 64,307 electric vehicles registered).  

The Electric Vehicle Pathway was able to create a continuum of Electric Vehicle education and training opportunities that span from introductory awareness kits all the way through US Department of Labor registered apprenticeships for automotive service professionals. A research report was also written to help guide industry, government and educational stakeholders with the expected transition to majority Electric Vehicle ownership in the state.   

Exposing NJ students to EV’s at an early age is critical to making the transportation disruption the state faces with the transition to electric vehicles as smooth as possible. Allowing students to see for themselves just how simple Electric Vehicles are to understand, build and maintain will positively affect their decisions as the automotive consumers of the future and hopefully also attract a portion of them to an EV related career. The EV Rover Lab curriculum was created to give 9th or 10th grade students in traditional high school science course an introduction to the foundational concepts and systems in Electric Vehicles. The EV Go-Kart Design Challenge was created to give students in a high school Vo-Tech or community college industrial design technology course a change to design, build and drive a single passenger Electric Vehicle.  

 An eighty-hour CTE training course was designed to upskill currently employed Automobile Technicians for their continued career development, and to expand this valuable career opportunity for those entering the workforce.  This training prepares attendees to achieve additional industry recognized certifications, and potentially, additional stackable credentials.  Most importantly, this program provides the much-needed safety training, and technical expertise required in the automotive industry as it expands into the next generation of vehicles.  

A supplemental EV training section has been added to the already established Automotive Technician Apprenticeship Program (ATAP) in order to give apprentices the option to move into EV repair.  The most basic automotive fundamentals are still required to become an EV tech specialist as all electric vehicles still have similar chassis’, electronics, steering, heating/air conditioning, braking, and airbag systems as internal combustion engines. ATAP will continue to cover all of those items, with an added concentration on EV safety, batteries, diagnostics, drive trains, and electronics. This apprenticeship is already registered with the US DOL and once approved, can begin offering the EV training immediately.   

In order to support the adoption of the EV course and the two EV Awareness initiatives, a set of three video tutorials and a PowerPoint guide were developed for course instructors.  

A pilot for the Automotive Technician/EV specialist training course and apprenticeship was held in 2023. The Pilot will hopefully be held at two locations, one would be at a Vocational Technical School in the northern part and the second would be at a community college with an already vibrant automotive program in south or central New Jersey.