BOUNTIFUL—High school automotive students are usually working on cars but at Bountiful High they’re actually building one – and an electric car at that. The EV Safety & Security class is the first of its kind in the district.

“I was at a CTE (Career and technical education) conference and saw a vehicle that looked almost like a dune buggy,” said Bountiful High CTE Coordinator Doug Young. “It was an electric vehicle that students could build and rebuild. They use the knowledge from the lower level classes like brakes, etc. and use this as a capstone class where they learn how to build a car, drive it around and then take it apart for the next year’s students.”

It’s a cool program that’s been running out of California for a while, said CTE teacher Erick Winkler. “For us it’s brand new, the first time in the district. I spent a week in California with the developers of this kit and with other auto instructors. We assembled and got one of these vehicles running, so it was a really cool experience.”

The only thing that was on that vehicle were the tires, he said. “Everything else has been built up as a sub assembly and then brought into place. It was all basically in bins on the shelf.”

Everything is kind of at one stage, said Winkler. “They’re independent portions of the puzzle and then they all tie together so it’s integrated which requires a lot of different forms of thinking.”

Winkler has been at Bountiful since 2012. “I like the way this class is structured,” he said. “It is the closest to the real world that we’ve been able to come so far. Some of the skills that students learn here are directly applicable to any kind of manufacturing and assembly. Then the electrical troubleshooting skills that they’ll get are pretty unique.”

This class has been awesome, said junior Henry Hall. “It’s a super cool project. It’s been cool going through the process of seeing the start. It's kind of just the frame and some wheels and we go from there to become something bigger and hopefully by the end of this the chance to drive it.”

Hall said most of the assembly they split off into smaller sections. “Our dash was a whole separate unit, our wiring was a separate unit. Batteries were all a separate unit. Now we’re kind of putting everything together and tightening up things.”

BHS sophomore Madeleine Johnson and senior Rex Walker work on the electric vehicle. Photo Becky Ginos

 “I’m more of a hands-on visual learner than reading and stuff,” said sophomore Madeleine Johnson. “I thought it was cool to explore potential careers and I heard the school had a good automotive program so I thought I’d check it out.”

Johnson’s job was to build the low voltage panel. “I’m installing it into the actual vehicle,” she said. “You’re connecting and attaching things but it was pretty challenging because of how dense it is. Little wires are going right next to each other in really small spaces but it wasn’t too complicated.”

“This class has been pretty different for me,” said senior Rex Walker. “Before this I hadn't done any auto work at all. I came to my counselor because I was looking for an engineering class because that’s what I want to go into.”

It’s been a great learning process to be able to see how something can be built from scratch to what it is, he said. “All the different parts and all the different things work together to work as a whole, especially the electric side of it and the EV system. It’s more zoned for what I want to go into, which is aerospace engineering.”

Instead of a normal auto class it’s an EV auto class, said Walker. “I get to see the electrical side of it and how all the motors work and how all the wiring works which is a lot of the same parts and stuff that is going to go into building rockets or whatever.”

“I’ve got two types of students here,” said Winkler. “Some are real hands on and they’re gifted just with the mechanics of the situation. And then I have students who are a little more thoughtful and are able to think about what we’re doing – bigger picture. They work as kind of a foreman. They don’t have their hands on as much as the other students. .They’re kind of driving that action.” 

As soon as the wires are all hooked up then the next challenge is two different layers of programming, one for battery management, charging the main battery, he said. “The other one is for motor controls, controlling forward and reverse and making sure that it doesn't go beyond the limits of the motor, controlling top speed.” 

It could very well be that at the end it doesn’t come apart, Winkler said. “Then the first thing students would do when we start next year is to take it apart and then reassemble it. The advantage for them doing that is to see the end product.”