Photo By Julio Rodriguez / Staff
It’s Electric!—Southwestern received seed money to develop a program to maintain electric vehicles. That spark has powered a new rush to retrain.
By Julio Rodriguez
Our future has arrived.
Electric cars are here.
San Diego County is ground zero for the plug-and-go revolution. The region saw an estimated 872 electric vehicle miles driven per 1,000 residents last year, one of the highest rates in the nation.
As the EV market grows, so do problems. No one seems to know how to fix the things.
Southwestern College to the rescue.
Three years ago the college received $200,000 in seed money from the state, part of an initiative to spur interest in electric vehicles programs in community colleges. Today that investment has grown to nearly $5 million for the new Electric Vehicles Program in the Automotive Department.
Program Coordinator Brian Palmiter left the automotive industry and joined the college to get EV studies on the road.
“Students (must) consider what’s going to be in their future,” he said. “We give students the idea of here’s what we used to fix, here’s what’s currently on the road, and here’s how we see the future. We want them to be ready for it.”
Palmiter said Southwestern has one of the best EV programs in the state. SC offers four courses that span 32 weeks. Instruction covers manually powering down the cars, removing the shell of the battery to explore its cells and Personal Protection Equipment. Students have access to top-of-the-line equipment, he said, including trainer kits that range in size from small latch boxes to giant tabletop figures that mimic the different aspects of vehicles. Kits cost from $5,000 to $50,000.
Students can work on the Chevy Bolt, Nissan Leaf, Toyota Priuses and Toyota Mirai (a hydrogen powered car).
Seven years ago John Kropp was tasked by the state to look for possible disruptions in advanced transportation coming down the pipeline with light, medium, and heavy-duty vehicles. California adopted its Clean Cars II legislation in 2022. It requires that by 2035 all new passenger vehicles sold in California are zero-emission. He ended up partnering with the California Energy Commission on the grant that enticed Southwestern to begin development of its program.
“(Southwestern) is one of the very few colleges to embrace it,” Kropp said. “Palomar is trying to catch up. Cuyamaca has a unique program. Miramar is trying to catch up.”
Jennifer Lewis, dean of the School of Applied Technology and Hospitality Management, said she is excited about the program. School personnel have been recruiting students from an array of backgrounds including high school graduates, adult schools, persons interested in retraining and industry professionals.
“Enrollment has skyrocketed,” she said. “We’ve put a lot of time and effort into outreach. We have been contacted by an international agency (which would like to visit) to learn what we have done.”
The Uruguayan Government has also reached out for guidance, Lewis said.
