«It was a rewarding experience, as I was able to find some very prepared participants,» Adolfo Rojas, instructor in charge of the training and president of AEDIVE PERU, told Portal Movilidad about the Electric Mobility Training and Job Placement Programme, whose next registration deadline is 29 April.

The course delivered by AEDIVE PERU in partnership with Portal Movilidad and Sustainablearth Latam is aimed at a broad and diverse sector. From technicians, professionals, owners of dealerships, among others, can enroll in the basic-intermediate and expert level programme, which deals with topics of electrical and mechanical architecture.

In several cases, the results have already begun to show in practice among the 84 students who have taken part in the virtual classes of the last four editions.

«Thanks to this course, one of my students in Ecuador has created a company where he will set up a massive programme for the migration to electric motorbike taxis, as well as other initiatives in Honduras and Guatemala,» Rojas points out.

«In each edition, there has always been someone who has put the learning into practice and is now managing projects for their countries,» he says.

And he adds: «From what I hear, it is one of the best technical courses in the region, given that they receive top quality material at an affordable price».

In this line, he refers that he has also had the experience of training members of the Latin American Association for Sustainable Mobility (ALAMOS).

«The course provides a broad level of detail so that they understand how hybrid and electric vehicles work, the charging infrastructure system, and trains you on technical criteria to understand all the benefits compared to their conventional counterparts,» says the president of the association.

Expert level course

Given that the just-ended stage provides logical-technical training on the morphology of an electric vehicle in relation to conventional ones, he anticipates that the next expert-level edition will feature fundamentals to the composition of the power transmission system in detail, dynamic modelling of the vehicle and topics related to high-level management and administration of the units.

He explains: «It is very detailed, deals with efficiency and covers real cases in field studies with different models of electric vehicles and buses».

Therefore, it is essential to have taken the basic intermediate level course, as in the second instance (expert level) the basics in mechanics, electricity and electronics of all the systems involved are laid down.

For those who have taken the course to feel the experience of the next stage, Adolfo points out: «It is essential that they have a good basic technical background, as the expert level teaches in depth about design calculations, simulation and conversions».

Profile of incoming students

When assessing the skills of the participants, what he finds most surprising is that he has met entrepreneurs who, through the training, are planning new business schemes from their workshops.

In this way, most of them have found through the course a way to enter the business world by importing and marketing these new types of vehicles.

They have also shown interest in private vehicles and electric buses, in order to «be able to integrate them into the business chain» of the country they come from.

Eighty-four people from different countries such as Panama, Ecuador, Bolivia, Chile, Dominican Republic, Mexico, United States, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Peru, among others, have already attended the training.

There were also students who received a scholarship to participate in each edition because, according to Rojas, «as AEDIVE PERU we understand that there are actors and institutions that we must support, mainly public entities and institutions and research centres».

They have the most varied professional profiles: some of them inherent to the commercial, technical and operations areas. They all pursue the objective of broadening horizons and transcending barriers.

The same goes for nationalities. «They nourish the course with issues they see in their countries, they bring their particularities and we integrate experiences,» Rojas explains.

They receive templates that they can easily customise for their countries. He also assumes: «That they turn the content into a business model for their country is what gives us the greatest pleasure.

Although negotiations are still underway, Adolfo Rojas says that he already has some ideas in mind for the 2023 edition: «To incorporate practical sessions with on-site and remote laboratory (live videos), which with the support of AEDIVE PERU we will have by implementing a workshop with a demonstration unit where you can see all the parts that confirm an electric vehicle in detail to better understand its inner workings».