To impart skills related to electric vehicles for creation of green jobs in the city, Delhi government is creating its first comprehensive training program for Electric Vehicles (EV) mechanics.

The course will prepare the requisite workforce for its thriving EV ecosystem.

The Delhi Skill and Entrepreneurship University (DSEU) will design an integrated course for training its ‘Diploma in Automobile Engineering’ program students to become ‘Electric Vehicle mechanics.’

Every year 100 students will be trained in basic and advanced EV mechanics training and provided with relevant internship and apprenticeship opportunities.

A Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed among DSEU, WRI India, and Hero Electric Vehicles Ltd. Today.

The DSEU will undertake the end-to-end design of the program’s course structure and curriculum.

“Through its rich industry experience, Hero Electric will support DSEU in designing the study material as well as provide practical training and internship opportunities to the program students,” said Delhi government in a press release.

As the knowledge partner, World Resources Institute India (WRI India) will provide the required research, monitoring, and evaluation support to the program.

Jasmine Shah, Vice Chairperson, DDC Delhi said, “The EV mechanics training program is the first of a series of short and long-term courses to be launched by Delhi Government to become the training hub of the EV workforce in India. The program has laid the foundation for the creation of thousands of green jobs in Delhi.”

Rolling out this much-needed training program fulfills two major priorities of the Delhi Government i.e. creating a skilled and trained workforce as envisioned in its Rozgar budget 2022-23 as well as achieving CM Arvind Kejriwal’s vision of making Delhi the EV capital of India, Shah added.

Delhi has already emerged as India’s EV capital by accelerating EV adoption through its dedicated policy launched in August 2020.

Delhi’s EV policy targets 25% of all new vehicle registrations to be EVs by 2024 and has already achieved an average of 10% share of EVs in 2022.

The upcoming training program collaboratively developed by DSEU with industry stakeholders will create an industry-ready workforce to support the multifaceted and expeditiously growing EV ecosystem in Delhi.

Shah further said, “The collaboration formalised today is a result of 8 months of intensive research and due diligence of the EV ecosystem by DDC Delhi and WRI India. The research analysis identified the lack of highly skilled EV mechanics as a potential skill gap as the ecosystem grows in Delhi with a requirement of around 500 new mechanics every year. Making automotive job aspirants future-ready skilled in EV technology will help optimise employment opportunities so that Delhi’s transition to electric mobility does not adversely impact the employment generation in the automobile and transport sectors.”

Prof. Neharika Vohra, Vice Chancellor, DSEU, said, “EV mechanics training program will be informed by evidence-based automotive best practices globally and is another step by DSEU to create adaptive skilling and education programs to enable access to aspirational jobs. The industry should also ensure they pay the skilled workforce a premium so that it can create a win-win situation for the youth and the industry.”

Manu Sharma from Hero Electric Vehicles Ltd. said, “We, at Hero Electric, have been waiting for 15 years for such a comprehensive training programme to be designed for EV mechanics and are happy to support their efforts the best we can.”