The first registered electric vehicle technician apprenticeship program in the country is starting its electric motor at the Community College of Allegheny County’s West Hills Campus in Oakdale. Acting U.S. Secretary of Labor Julie Su was in town on Thursday to cut the ribbon on the program’s new training lab.
“This is a first-in-the-nation program that we hope will be an example for the rest of the country as we continue to expand industries to ensure that we are not just building things, but we're also protecting our clean air and our clean climate,” Su said.
It’s a one-year, tuition-free program where students are paired with a local dealership for paid on-the-job training to learn things that can’t be taught in a classroom, such as removing and reinstalling a high-voltage battery. The bulk of the instruction will take place in the new lab at CCAC, where there’s a strong focus on safety.
“Safety is really, really a big portion of what this training is about,” said Bob Koch, the lead instructor for the program at CCAC. “And I try to explain it to people this way — there is no excuse, so to speak, to let people realize how dangerous that battery pack is. You can't smell it. You can't hear it. You can't sense it. There's no spatial awareness that says, ‘Wow, that's heavy. That’s going to fall on me,’ type of deal. I've got 400, 600, 800 volts in that battery pack. If you happen to grab it the wrong way, you die.”
The first group of apprentices will already have some automotive experience — for example, technicians who work for a car manufacturer, dealerships, or the county's maintenance department.
“The biggest problem with this stuff is you don't grow up with it,” Koch said. “It's not like I could play with it in my backyard. I can’t play with it in my driveway.” Technicians need to have the right training, tools and equipment to learn how these vehicles work under the hood.
Right now, training for technicians who work with electric vehicles is manufacturer-specific. But CCAC’s program is modeled on an EV apprenticeship program in Germany and trains technicians to understand and diagnose issues “from the plug to the car” across a range of manufacturers, according to Koch. And there’s noted differences between manufacturers. For example, Porsche and Ford allow technicians to take the battery apart or overhaul the battery. Other manufacturers like Mercedes and Nissan do not, according to Koch.
“This is always evolving on the manufacturing side,” Koch said. “On the education side of it, it's just going to keep moving.”
Pennsylvania had 70,154 electric vehicles registered in the state in 2023, according to the most recent data from the U.S. Department of Energy. This is similar to the amount of EVs registered in Massachusetts but far fewer than the 1.3 million registered in California, which make up 35% of the EV market in the U.S.
This apprenticeship came out of a collaboration between Partner4Work, the German American Chamber of Commerce’s Pittsburgh chapter and CCAC. A grant from the Department of Labor provided the initial funding from the program and the Hillman Family Foundation paid for lab equipment.
The first group of electric vehicle technician apprentices will start training in the spring semester in 2025. Graduates get 15 college credits and a certification as electric vehicle automotive technicians.
