Depowering batteries a critical automotive skill: expert

Mechanics, auto electricians and service departments will already be feeling the pressure to adapt, and they’re not alone.? Our industry’s preparedness starts at a grassroots level, with the education system that teaches our apprentices and trainees.

Chris Isaac, TAFE NSW teacher and lover of all things automotive, tells us about the next generation of mechanics walking through his doors, what they’re looking for under the bonnet of your EV, and how they’re safeguarding the future of the automotive workforce.

It’s in his blood. Chris started as a self-proclaimed ‘over-enthusiastic apprentice’, serving his time as a mechanic for more than 10 years with BMW, followed by time at Audi Australia’s national training portfolio with the Audi Sport brand.

Now, Chris is an automotive teacher at TAFE NSW and leads the TAFE’s EV Skillset course, preparing our current and future mechanics as the industry continues to transition to new energy vehicles. A traditionalist at heart, he also acknowledges and embraces change.

“The mechanic of yesteryear is dead anyway, and that’s always been the case with each generation of mechanic,” says Isaac, as he reminds us that in the past ten years, the automotive industry has had more technology growth than the preceding fifty years. Every generation of mechanics faces change and with that, brings the need for new skills.

However, Isaac goes on to say that while ICE vehicles and EVs are very different, there are a lot of crossovers in the service space because, at the end of the day, it’s still a motor vehicle.

“If we look at it from the servicing side, in the workshop, it’s important to know the difference between your battery electric and your hybrid vehicles because they have a different servicing schedule, the hybrids obviously having an internal combustion engine still in the current market and that means there is still some ICE servicing standard procedure like oil changes that we’re aware of,” says Isaac.

“When we head over to the battery-electric, we go to a different approach, but servicing is still primarily the same… In the battery electric vehicle sphere, instead of say doing oil degradation tests and sampling and things like that… we’re doing battery state of charge tests, motor efficiency tests… But it’s still servicing nonetheless and so training is really important.”

The current skillset course works on a similar sphere of units of competency to traditional TAFE qualifications. The electric vehicle sphere primarily focuses on depower repower, disconnecting and reconnecting high voltage.

“In a lot of cases were talking about, starting at 240-volts and sometimes ending up at 1100 volts DC, so big voltage and obviously you need to know your stuff there, it can be very unsafe, very dangerous if you don’t.”

Isaacs says the focus is on safe repower and depower and maintenance of those vehicles relative to industry needs.

“We’re not doing some sort of crazy envisioning of what it might be, it’s about dealing and meeting with people with where they’re at, which is essentially what TAFE is very good at.”

And adapting to new technology is not just a young person’s game.?

“The last course I ran, I had a young 18-year-old… and then the oldest guy in the course was 65. That’s cool.

Ultimately, there is no standing still in the automotive industry. There’s either leading the way, keeping up or falling behind.”

Tune into Episode Three of Watts Under the Bonnet to listen to the full interview with TAFE NSW’s Chris Isaac.?

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