Since Gottlieb Daimler patented the “automobile” in 1886, the world has changed dramatically. What has fueled (literally) much of the change has been the availability of inexpensive energy, much of it in the form of cheap oil along with the other fossil fuels of coal and natural gas.

Cheap energy allowed our society to industrialize, to urbanize, to travel, and to specialize. Specialization of labor is a hallmark of the technological revolutions that, within the span of a century, have brought us from an agrarian, labor-based, regional society to a highly urbanized, international, information-based society.

Until recently, change within the automotive industry has been slow in coming. Nicklaus Otto’s four cycle gasoline-powered engine was already more than a century old before the carburetor was finally discarded in favor of electronically controlled engine management in the seventies and eighties.

This change was really the first real revolution in automotive technology. Further refinement and standardization of engine management came along around 1994 with the adoption of OBDll (on-board diagnostics version ll) as mandated by the Federal Government. This is the architecture that is still with us today. OBDll vehicles require the use of micro-processor-controlled, adaptive electronic control systems which can monitor, control, and even correct, to a limited extent, all phases of driveline operation.

More about OBDll later!

With the coming of the new millennium came the second revolution in automotive technology. This second revolution was the introduction into the retail marketplace of practical and efficient hybrid electric drive technology led by the Honda Insight in 1999 and followed in 2001 by the Toyota Prius. Hybrids are now firmly planted in the marketplace, and their numbers are sure to increase in the next few years. Most market studies predict hybrid drives will be found in at least 3 million new cars by 2010, which means that within the next five years we could see 10 million light-duty hybrid vehicles on the highways of America! Further market analysis indicates that up to 50 percent of these hybrid drives could utilize clean diesel engines instead of gasoline-powered engines. Diesel hybrids being tested today claim fuel economies in excess of 80 mpg compared to gasoline hybrids, which at best are only capable of 60 mpg.

Now it is time to come to the point: OBDll is simply a refinement of existing combustion control technology which has been around for about twenty years. OBDll itself has been around now for twelve years. Yet today the most commonly taught courses in the automotive training industry (above the introductory level) are about OBDll!! The problem we face is that the latest revolution in automotive technology is based not on the properties of combustion but upon the properties of the electron.

Do we need 10 million hybrids on the road in five years? Of course we do. We need them to reduce our consumption of oil, which is no longer cheap. We need them to reduce the number of dollars we ship off to OPEC, which is doing untold damage to our economy. We need them to reduce the tons of carbon we are pumping into the air, creating damage to our atmosphere. Yet if we are going to have 10 million or so hybrid electric drive vehicles on the road within the next five years, something is going to have to happen within the world of automotive technical training to provide us with enough technicians to service and maintain this revolutionary technology or it isn’t going to happen. The American consumer will not buy something that cannot be easily and conveniently fixed!

The history of automotive education as it was applied to teaching OBDll to the American Automotive Technician cannot be repeated. As a matter of national economic and environmental security we need to change how we train our technicians, and this means we need to change how we train our children.

Ohm’s Law states the fundamental relationship between the three parameters of electricity, these being current (amperage), pressure (voltage), and resistance (Ohms). I do not think you can find an automotive instructor who has not had to teach Ohm’s Law. In fact, most instructors find themselves teaching it regularly. This must stop. Ohm’s Law needs to be taught in high school, not in Vo-Tech class or later. The basic principles of electricity set forth in Ohm’s Law and the principles of physics that apply to the automobile need to be understood by our next generation of technicians before they set foot in their first automotive technology class.

How are we going to accomplish this? I don’t know! But I think it is time to begin a national dialogue to develop an answer. Help start this dialogue. Start it locally, start it wherever you can (I do it in restaurants!). Help bring about the kind of change that will ensure high school graduates can calculate the amperage of the 1500 watt microwave in their kitchen, explain the laws of thermodynamics, and calculate in their head the amount of current that will flow in a 12V circuit with a resistance of 2 Ohms. To help maintain our quality of life, our freedom to travel, and also enjoy clean air and energy independence, it requires your full support!

Bumper sticker for the new millennium: Support Ohm’s Law