Georgetown High School students engineer electric car from scratch

During his automotive class at Georgetown High School on Thursday, junior Michael Friemel, donning a gray technician class shirt and a big smile, climbed with excitement into the driver’s seat of a 1993 Ford Fox body Mustang and flipped the switch.

The car turned on with a quiet whirl, instead of the characteristic churn of a large engine. That's because the Mustang is an electric car — the first designed and built by the school's automotive students.

“I think it’s a really good opportunity, especially for someone like me, who’s planning on going into automotive,” Friemel said. “If you’re going straight into the business, and you don’t have any knowledge, you have to learn as you go.”

Students and instructors at Georgetown High School are hopeful the yearslong electric vehicle program will turn up a functional car, though for now, their creation has only hummed and moved a few feet. But that's all part of preparing students for a possible career in the automotive industry, instructors said.

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High school teacher Kelley Mayo said he decided to kick off the car project four or five years ago as the auto industry's focus switches gears toward electric vehicles.

“We’re constantly looking to what is the next step and looking at the industry standards,” Mayo said.

Students drove the car for the first time this fall, after years of working on the engine. The car only drove a few feet, but it’s a huge step for the students, Mayo said.

“It’s been a great opportunity for the kids to learn,” Mayo said. “There’s no manual. We’ve had to be very creative in the way we put this thing back together.”

The high school has a four-year automotive program that’s meant to prepare students for car industry careers.

The project Mustang, like most of the cars students work on, was donated to the school. It’s a shell lacking paint and has mounted seats that Mayo found from another car.

Students installed 12-volt batteries in the car's trunk and gutted the area under the hood. Instead of an engine, that space holds a student-built wooden platform, a series of wiring and a controller, which uses the batteries’ charge to control the vehicle’s speed and acceleration.

The project, however, has presented students with multiple unforeseen challenges.

“We get it all hooked up and first thing, nothing happened,” Mayo said.

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Some of the work has been frustrating, sophomore Ricardo Rodriguez said, as working on the car means a lot of troubleshooting. However, when it turned on and drove, it was really exciting, he said.

“It is going to be something I’m not going to forget,” Rodriguez said.

The students have high hopes they'll soon learn how to get the car moving short distances.

“Automotive is easily my favorite class of the day,” Friemel said. “We’re always like, ‘You ready to work on the Mustang?’”

On Thursday, the car didn’t move after it was turned on. Mayo plugged his laptop into the car’s control panel to identify an error code. The batteries hadn’t been charged enough, he said.

Friemel pointed out that the batteries can sometimes take days to charge.

Right now, a series of 12-volt batteries powers the Mustang, but Mayo wants to get a grant to replace them.

“They don’t provide enough energy to propel the car the way we want it to,” Mayo said.

Instead, Mayo and his students hope to purchase lithium ion batteries, which are lighter, more powerful and easier to charge.

Mayo has already used a $5,000 grant to purchase some of the electrical equipment.

Mayo also hopes excitement about the car will bring attention to the school’s automotive program.

The industry has seen a dip in young people wanting to work in the field. The number of collision technicians has dropped nationwide from about 160,000 in 2016 to about 153,000 in 2020, according to the TechForce Foundation’s 2021 report.

“The old, greasy guy with a wrench and disheveled hair isn’t what we’re talking about now,” Mayo said.

The computers and advanced technology in cars have completely changed the trade, he said.

“It’s more mental than it is physical now,” Mayo said. “We’re not mechanics anymore. We’re technicians.”

The students are also working to get the car ready for a competition later this spring.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Georgetown ISD automotive students build an electric 1993 Ford Mustang