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SACRAMENTO, California (KOVR) -- California has set a goal of having five million electric vehicles on the road in the next six years, and training is now underway to ensure there are enough people with the high-tech skills to maintain them.
Charging stations are often a weak link in the new electric highway. That's why dozens of people are now taking classes learning how to fix them.
A first-of-its-kind classroom in Sacramento is teaching students electric vehicle technology.
"We are at the beginning of this electrification revolution so we have to build the workforce, we have to train people," said ChargerHelp! co-founder Evette Ellis.
ChargerHelp! repairs and maintains EV charging stations across the country, and they're opening a new training program in Sacramento at the California Mobility Center.
"They have assignments where they have to break something down and put it back together again," Ellis said.
The number of electric vehicles in California is skyrocketing.
"One in every four cars in California that is sold is an electric vehicle," said Orville Thomas, the CEO of the California Mobility Center.
Ten years ago, there were just 123,000 zero-emission vehicles in the state. Today, there are more than 1.8 million. However, there are only 105,000 charging stations for all those cars and it's estimated that more than 20% are broken at any given time.
"The horror stories are when people try to go charge their vehicle and they plug in and nothing happens," Thomas said.
That could be for a number of reasons.
"It could be the screen is broken, the credit card reader is broken, the cord has been stripped, but most of the time, it's a software issue," Ellis said.
This training program lasts three weeks and is free for the 15 students in each class who are then certified by the Society of Automotive Engineers.
"There's going to be huge demand for them once they graduate," Thomas said.
California Governor Gavin Newsom has banned the sales of all new gas-powered cars by 2035, and staff at the program say that will make the future demand for e-v techs rise even more.
"No matter what your belief system is, I think the writing is on the wall that we are well into moving towards electrification," Ellis said.
All current classes are full and there is a waiting list. Funding for the training comes from a federal grant.
