The growing importance of electric vehicles in Canada, and even globally, was evident on December 5, 2019 when a Nissan Leaf worth $20,000 was donated to the West Island Professional Training Centre (WICC) car mechanics program in Montreal, Que.
The vehicle was donated as part of a “first-ever” initiative from Spinelli, in which the dealer group obtained a vehicle as a contribution from Nissan Canada, according to Sébastien Bourgeois, General Manager of Spinelli Nissan, Pointe Claire.
In an interview with Canadian auto dealer, Bourgeois said the partnership with WICC is meant to promote education for technicians. “We all know the industry lacks a lot of labourers to work on our cars, and obviously every season we have difficulty finding new people to replace the ones retiring,” said Bourgeois. “As a big dealer group, there’s obviously a big need for education and getting better qualified people, so we thought a partnership with the West Island Career Centre was proper.”
Spinelli is one of the largest dealer groups in the Greater Montreal area. Its initiative is about supporting the efforts of the WICC to help students who are eyeing a career in the automotive industry. In a news release, the group also said several initiatives will be developed together with the staff and management of the institution to help students have access to quality equipment.
“We actually called out for this particular technology in electric cars. We know it’s the future, and we know we are selling more and more every year,” said Bourgeois. “It is a specialized type of mechanic, so it’s important for the students to have something to work on that’s actual so when they get into the dealerships they are trained and ready to meet the actual needs of our customers.”
The students seem to understand the importance of this as well. Twenty year-old Noah Shara, a student at WICC, said he thinks the world is moving towards electric vehicles and that the technology behind it is evolving quickly.
“The vehicles in today’s world that we have and have had over the past 50 to 60 years are starting to become slightly outdated,” said Shara. “It’s important that we learn more on hybrid and electric technology, since in today’s world we have so many modules and electrical components.”
Asked what he thinks of the Nissan Leaf donation to the school, Shara said he considered practical knowledge to be more important than simple theory.
“You can read a book in a classroom as much as you want, but in all honesty you’re going to gain most of your real-world knowledge actually working on a vehicle,” said Shara. “Being able to have an actual electric vehicle in our school will definitely accelerate the learning process in where the field is going.”
