The days of the backyard mechanic are coming to an end and the City College Automotive Service and Technology Department is preparing a new generation of mechanics to deal with current developments such as hybrid cars and biodiesel engines.
Record-breaking fuel prices, steadily rising for the last five years, have driven the industry to alternative combustion engines including hybrids that combine gas and electricity, and biodiesel engines, both increasing gas mileage and decreasing fossil fuel consumption.
Over the last 20 years, these oil prices and consumer demands have combined to shift the auto industry into a new era.
While this technology has not officially been added to the City College curriculum, students are working outside the boundaries of class content to stay up on current trends.
“The more we can learn about alternative fuel in our classes, the easier it will be for students to get good jobs in the auto industry, out of our school,” said automotive student Jozef Antolin.
Students are discussing and experimenting with developments such as microprocessors that control functions ranging from ignitions to brakes. They have worked with biodiesel, an efficient fuel produced from vegetable oil. They have also studied hybrid cars, all in an effort to keep pace with the rapidly changing industry.
While gas prices have not deeply affected City College’s curriculum, the instability of an oil-rich Middle East may affect how much people are willing to pay at the pump.
“Oil is an emotional, political product. People do not want to support the oil industry,” said Ken Olsen, president of McCormick, a biodiesel plant in Goleta. “Distribution of biodiesel is crucial to so many people. So if you have it, you will always have a following.”
But there are complications with alternative fuels. Engines are harder to start. Trucks cannot run solely on biodiesel, requiring a blend with regular diesel.
“Santa Barbara is not the place for big biodiesel. Electric hybrids would probably work the best in urban settings,” said Wally Loster, a 2004 graduate of the City College auto program.
Bob Stockero, a 20-year automotive instructor at City College sees a future in combining electric hybrids with biodiesel engines. “[Biodiesel hybrids] would be ideal. If you could get a diesel engine running on biodiesel fuel in a hybrid, you could get over 100 miles to the gallon,” he said.
Stockero said students have been working tirelessly with alternative fuel. Some students are even cooking up biodiesel at home. This trend toward fuel alternatives in the City College program is a microcosm of what is happening in the world of automobile manufacturing.
BMW has developed a 12-cylinder, duel-fuel engine that could run on octane or hydrogen. It has plans to release 100 hydrogen-hybrid cars as early as next year. Mercedes, Jeep, and Toyota are racing to create the most fuel-efficient, environmentally friendly car.
Manufacturers failing to stay up to date with alternative fuel are quickly falling out of favor with consumers. Toyota just eclipsed Ford as the second-leading seller in the United States and is preparing to hasten its plant closings already in progress.
Merrill Lynch has downgraded Ford’s stock to “sell” status and in 2008, the company expects Ford to sell only 3.6 million vehicles annually in North America, a 26 percent decrease from 2005.
“The job market in this industry is only going to increase as time goes on and more and more is learned about what we can do with alternative fuel,” biodiesel executive Olsen said. Adding that there are a fair amount of biodiesel producers, but distributors are hard to find.
“There is no John Rockefeller of biodiesel,” Olsen said. “Nobody has taken the lead in the industry.” He added that any automotive student interested in the future of alternative fuels should look to biodiesel. The limited availability of biodiesel alone presents entrepreneurial opportunities for businessmen.
But alternative fuels are only one part of the evolving industry.
Technicians have gone from repairing strictly mechanical parts to becoming computer-literate, City College graduate Loster said.
“Corvettes, for example, now come with up to 15 computers in the car, including censors and switches. When I was still at SBCC [in 2004], we had only begun to look into things like that,” Loster said.
Aside from the wide range of knowledge that mechanics now need to work on modern cars, there is a higher level of trust that the consumer must place in the mechanic. “Things have gotten more complicated and it’s easier now for a mechanic to sell someone a whole lot of nothing,” Stockero said.