Wanted: Vehicle Technician for Tesla Dealership
It's definitely a sign of further maturation for the new Tesla Dealership in Santa Monica, CA. Tesla is seeking a "talented and experienced" vehicle technician to service their sexy works of automotive design. What is interesting are the job requirements. All that is needed are a high school diploma and an A.A. degree in automotive technology (or equivalent experience). I realize that for most other types of vehicle technician positions, this is entirely satisfactory. And, as my good friend, Paul Scott (from Plug In America), writes, "If they make them as good as Toyota made their Rav4 EV, you won't have much to do except chat with some fun people...Well, okay, and rotate the tires and stuff."
Still, I would think that some kind of specialized or credentialed education in electric vehicle technology would be necessary. This position is a prime example of the "green collar job" that is gaining cachet in policy and planning circles. Of course, it takes a while for the educational field to catch up with the emergence of technologically innovative industries. However, in California, there is an established network of community colleges that provides technical training in alternative vehicle technologies.
Surprisingly, many of the courses offered through these colleges are under-enrolled. When speaking with an instructor of a course in electric car conversions at the Long Beach campus this past semester, I was told the course was canceled because students think that "the electric car is dead."
With the advent of more job postings like this, perhaps we will begin to see more youth interest in electric vehicle technology and the expansion of clean vehicle education.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Ignatius 10:23PM (7/17/2008)
It'd be nice to be able to afford school for this. I'd love to work as a technician for electric cars.
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CurtCurt 11:40PM (7/17/2008)
Shouldn't be too hard to service that car.
If the computer throws out a code, just attach a reader and replace the part.
It's not like the technician will pry open the battery compartment and start re-soldering all the small batteries all by himself.
If the pack fails, it should be replaced with a new pack. The old pack is then sent back to the main facility so it can be taken apart to find the problem.
Production engineers back at the main facility can then trace the problem back to its source and make appropriate fixes.
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Tony Belding 1:15AM (7/18/2008)
My understanding is that the cells in the battery pack are organized into 11 "blades" which are each replaceable. So if a cell catches fire and burns up, for example, they would replace that blade instead of the entire ESS.
edward 3:52AM (7/20/2008)
about the electric car you would first put a hard drive on each of the wheels that would pair gps to all wheels to its destination as a similar as a smart bomb program. computer will digitized electric motors to gain frequencies as that of a jet engine. new age magnets have enough torque to planish all motors with small electric comsuptium. need grant thank you
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BlackbirdHighway 5:37AM (7/18/2008)
Key qualification: Able to drive customers cars short distances without crashing.
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ThatTallGuy 8:15AM (7/18/2008)
The word you're looking for is "cachet". "Cache" is a place where you hold things.
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CMiller 8:36AM (7/18/2008)
Really the biggest difference with working with these cars is the fact that you have high voltage on board that needs to be isolated before you can work on it. A 3 hour class from a Tesla tech teaches you what to do as long as you already have electrician experience. The qualifications are not that surprising.
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Nixon 12:45PM (7/18/2008)
Not every employee in a shop gets to work on every part of the car. Some schmuck still gets the sh!t jobs to do. Rotate the tires, check brake pads, lube the chassis, adjust the alignment, replace shocks and suspension, change the windshield wipers, fill the washer fluid, etc. You don't pay an electrical engineer to do those tasks. There is a lot more to an electric car than just the electrical components
I don't think as much can be read into this one help wanted ad as is being read into this.
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Whopper 4:17PM (7/18/2008)
There is a whole cadre of electric lift truck technicians out there in the world who are quite comfortable working with electronic controllers, batteries and AC/DC motors.
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Joseph 8:21PM (7/18/2008)
In an EV, the the mechanical parts, a very simple, so mechanically things rarely go wrong. The electronics are very complex, but they nearly never break down, so the mechanic wouldn't need any expertise in that area.
The battery pack could be a little iffy. Let me explain. Let's suppose that one out of a million batteries are bad. The Tesla Roadster has 6,831 batteries so....
1,000,000 divided by 6,831
means that about one out of every ~150 Tesla Roadsters will have a bad battery. Now, I don't know this for certain, but I think I heard somewhere that although the Roadster can still operate just fine with one or two (or several dozen for that matter) bad batteries, you still need to take it to the Tesla store for a mechanic to change it. (I'm assuming this is because Tesla would like to know exactly how common battery failures are, no matter how insignifigant they may be)
The battery pack is divided into modules, so I'm assuming this would be fairly plug and play to service the battery pack for that rare bad battery. So, servicing the battery pack shouldn't be all that difficult. Bob Sexton (Chelsea Sexton's husband) is the service manager at the flagship Tesla store. In Who Killed the Electric Car he said it was a joy to service the EV1 because it was so easy and clean to service.
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