Collaborative Research: Development of an Electric Vehicle Engineering Technology Program for the Middle Tennessee Region
This project is funded by the National Science Foundation, Award numbers 2400884 and
Motlow State Community College, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, and Chattanooga State Community College
Project Principal Investigator Team:
Project Principal Investigator Team:
Project Lead PI: Larry Flatt, Motlow State Community College
Project PI: Dr. Lyn Potter, Chattanooga State Community College
Project C-PI: Dr. Khalid Tantawi, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
Project Co-PI: Eric Reynolds, Motlow State Community College
Project Co-PI: Omar Tantawi, Motlow State Community College
Project Co-PI: Al Curtis, Chattanooga State Community College
Electric vehicle start-ups, legacy automakers, and their suppliers are investing heavily in Tennessee, According to the Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development (TN-ECD), over $16.2 billion in capital investment in electric vehicle projects have been made in Tennessee since 2017, ranking Tennessee first in the southeast for EV manufacturing, employment, and investment. [6] Tennessee’s automotive manufacturing sector includes four major car manufacturers:
- Nissan (Smyrna/Decherd): $8.5 billion investment with the plant producing 640,000 vehicles annually.
- Volkswagen Group of America (Chattanooga Operations): Over $3.5 billion investment in its Chattanooga operations, employed more than 4,000 individuals and produced more than one million cars since 2012. Currently producing the electric ID.4.
- General Motors (Spring Hill): underwent a 1.5-million-square-foot, $2 billion expansion to update technology and enable the plant to build both internal combustion engine cars and electric vehicles.
- Ford (Stanton): Ground broke in September 2022 on Ford’s Blue Oval City, a $5.6 billion, six-square-mile mega campus that will manufacture vehicles and batteries. The Blue Oval City is expected to create over 6,000 new jobs and will begin production in 2025 [7]
Additionally, Tennessee has almost 1000 automotive suppliers with operations in over 90% of its counties. According to the Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development, almost 30,000 Tennesseans are employed by companies with electric vehicle operations and over 200,000 electric vehicles are projected to be on Tennessee roads by 2028. [6] These manufacturing plans are located minutes from the institutions on this project (Motlow State C.C. Smyrna Campus and Chattanooga State C.C.)
In the year 2023, the State of Tennessee ranked fourth on the U.S. in number of automobile manufacturing jobs according to the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, with approximately 20,000 jobs in auto manufacturing [6]. see Figure 1 below.
Figure 1. Automobile manufacturing plants in the U.S. are concentrated in the states of Michigan, Illinois, Ohio, Tennessee, and Alabama. The State of Tennessee ranks 4th in the nation in auto manufacturing workforce.
According to The Improving the Pipeline for Tennessee’s Workforce Academic Supply for Occupational Demand Report, Electrical and Electronic Engineering Technologists and Technicians are in-demand in seven regions, and Automotive Service Technicians and Mechanics are in high demand in nine regions in Tennessee. [9] Furthermore, Jobs4TN.gov shows a high demand for Motor Vehicle Manufacturing and Motor Vehicle Parts Manufacturing talent with the job outlook growing. The employment of Electrical and Electronic Technicians is projected to grow 2% from 2020 to 2030 as well.
Correspondingly, research studies by The TechForce Foundation show that the United States will need approximately 150,000 electric vehicle technicians by the year 2030. This number is very conservative, given that currently in the United States (as of September 2023), less than 1% of all vehicles on the road are electric-powered [7], and there is already a shortage in EV technicians.
In addition to that, several think-tanks predict a critical shortage of electric vehicle technicians in 2030 [8] [9] with too few technicians to service the volume of electric-powered vehicles. Thus, the need for electric vehicle technicians is expected to grow rapidly in the coming years as more and more people switch to electric vehicles. Another research study by McKinsey & Company found that 60% of automotive executives believe that the shortage of qualified technicians is a major challenge for the industry, and negatively impacts the industry’s ability to innovate and grow. Executives said that the shortage is making it difficult to develop and launch new products and services, and to meet customer demand [10]. This shortage is threatening to slow the adoption of electric vehicles and hinder the United States’ progress in that field.
The aggressive growth of electric vehicle sales is evident in the data published by the International Energy Agency, which forecasts that Electric Vehicles will account for almost 100% of the world new vehicle sales by 2040 (see table 1 below).
Table 1. Growth Forecast of the share of Electric Vehicle market by the International Energy Agency [11]
| Year | Percentage of new vehicle sales |
| 2021 | 9 % of new vehicle sales |
| 2025 | 20 % of new vehicle sales |
| 2030 | 40 % of new vehicle sales |
| 2040 | >99 % of new vehicle sales |
To add to that, as of September 1, 2023, nine states in the U.S. have banned the sale of new gasoline-powered vehicles by the year 2035: California, Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Washington (In addition to the nine states listed, Vermont has also passed legislation that would require all new cars sold in the state to be zero-emission vehicles by 2030, however, this legislation has not yet been signed into law by the governor). The nine states joined the California Air Resources Board’s (CARB) Advanced Clean Cars II rule, which requires automakers to sell an increasing percentage of zero-emission vehicles each year. The combined population of the nine states comprises about 30% of the U.S. population, and it is expected that more states will join the ban.
Therefore, the previously predicted figures by the International Energy Agency for the year 2030 would be even much higher for the United States, which adds more pressure for the upcoming demand of skilled electric vehicle technicians.
Electric Vehicle Engineering Technology Education in Middle and East Tennessee 