MOMENTUM - April 2024 - 23

SUSTAINABILITY
Teams of EVSE trainees complete a capstone project prior to graduation.
Graduate Marcus Long presented his team's look at the state of charging in
Detroit.
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Last year, SAE International launched the
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cost to the participants. Fifteen people graduated from the
initial class, and the program hopes to train 100 more before
the end of the year.
Michael Paras, SAE manager of business development,
partnerships and sales, outlined what drove the organization to
take part in creating the certification standards. " The industry
wants a mechanism for certifying that technicians possess the
requisite skills and knowledge to be working on EVSE, " he said.
Frank Menchaca, president of SAE's Sustainable Mobility
Clarinda Barnett-Harrison is director of skills for Michigan Central, a
mobility and tech incubator in downtown Detroit.
Solutions, emphasized the need for thousands of technicians
should the United States come anywhere close to hitting netzero
carbon emissions by 2050. " We would need something
like 320 million electric vehicles, " he said. Menchaca also said
the organization envisioned an upwardly mobile series of jobs
beginning with the EVSE techs.
" We think about this certification training, we hope this is
Sarah Hipel, with the
Joint Office of Energy
and Transportation,
has long been working
on new-energy
infrastructure issues.
step number one, and the scaffolding career where people can
come in from nontraditional backgrounds, and learn this, then
take it to the next step, whether it's software or what have you,
we see a pathway in new energy vehicles. Because it is not just
in the charging stations. Instead, it's the whole infrastructure,
they filter out to support that. And we're going to need people
to work in these jobs. "
Marcus Long, a graduate of the first class, presented his
team's capstone project, which was a survey of the charging
landscape in the city of Detroit. The team found chargers in a
variety of conditions, from pristine and working to nonfunctioning
and even potentially dangerous. " Just the other
day I went to three different locations and none of them
worked, " he said. That is not terribly surprising, as recent
studies have said that at any given time, up to 30% of public
chargers in the United States aren't functioning.
Long said he was driven to go into the business for two
SAE International's Michael Paras said that the training program-and the
need for curriculum and testing requirements-are meant to directvly
address the industry's need for new workers.
MOMENTUM
reasons: the employment opportunity, but also the chance to
be working in an industry that is helping fight air pollution-
which disproportionately affects minority communities.
" I want to be part of making the world better, " he said. n
By Chris Clonts, Editor-in-Chief of Automotive Engineering.
This article was edited for MOMENTUM.
April 2024 23
PHOTOS: SAE/Chris Clonts
https://sustainablecareers.sae.org/ https://sms.sae.org/ https://sms.sae.org/ https://www.lung.org/clean-air/outdoors/who-is-at-risk/disparities https://www.sae.org/news/2024/02/sae-chargerhelp-evse-tech-training-program
MOMENTUM - April 2024

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