22-year-old Logan Robertson is stretched underneath a large white truck.
We’re in a small warehouse in Pulaski County, a few miles away from the Volvo truck assembly plant. Wrench in hand, Robertson loosens the seal for the truck’s coolant.
The truck still has a few kinks to iron out. It’s a fully electric spotter truck, designed to haul trailers at a harbor, railyard or distribution center.
“I really do enjoy what I do,” Robertson said. He’s been working part-time as an intern at Trova Commercial Vehicles since May. At college, he’s learning to design the parts for electric trucks. At Trova, he’s also learned to assemble them.
Thousands of autoworkers across the country are still on strike. One issue that looms in the background is transitioning to electric, and hydrogen, vehicles, as the auto industry moves away from fossil fuels.
“I think that what I’ve been able to do, what I’ve been able to work on has definitely shown me that there are gonna be a lot of changes, a lot of things that are gonna need to change,” Robertson said. “We’re gonna have to completely restructure how vehicles are built.”
His boss, Patrick Collignon founded Trova in 2019. “We want to find ways to transition faster from vehicles that run on conventional fuels, internal combustion engines, towards zero emissions vehicles,” Collignon said.
A former operations officer for VOLVO, Collignon found Robertson when he reached out to the local community college, looking to hire an intern.
“And I think here is a good match, for a young, talented man like Logan, is to get hands-on experience, what does it mean to physically put a product together?” Collignon said.
The professor who’s teaching Robertson also came to work at Trova over the summer to learn how to put an electric vehicle together. “I learned everything from scratch. Made me realize how much I didn’t know,” said Jeff Levy, the director of the Engineering Design Technology program at New River Community College, where he’s been teaching for over 20 years. He said many commercial auto companies are transitioning quickly to electric—especially those that supply vehicles for shipping harbors.
Collignon said he thinks it makes economic sense to shift away from carbon polluting fuels, as soon as possible.
“If you do it smart, there’s a good match between doing the right thing, and profitable,” Collignon said.
Robertson said he also thinks there’s a moral reason to work on this technology. He’s a Christian, and believes the bible teaches environmental stewardship.
“God gave us the earth, we have to take care of it,” Robertson said. “We are here on it for a time, so we do need to take care of it while we have the opportunity to do so.”
He admits the cost of an electric vehicle makes it hard for him to make the switch to an EV personally. And the lack of charging infrastructure in his home county of Floyd is also a barrier at this point.
This fall, he’ll start mentoring a few other students at New River Community College to help pass on some of the hands-on experience. And the Trova spotter truck he’s been building will be sent out this fall to companies for test drives. It could go on the market in the next couple of years.
This story is part of an occasional series about students training for in-demand careers.
