While a significant part of engineering remains the same irrespective of the power train, there are still a few aspects that necessitate additional learning:
The weight distribution of the various aggregates changes, especially in the context of larger and heavier batteries in most vehicles.
The dynamics and driveability of the vehicles differ on account of the electrification resulting in significant torques at all speeds, as well as the reduced need for gearing the drive train. Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) vehicles typically need more gears to take the vehicle to the higher speeds while EVs can do that speed climb without any or minimal gearing.
Regeneration is an important angle for Electric Vehicles (EVs), as one can slow down the vehicle by regenerating power and not braking. Such an option is minimally available in ICE, especially without any energy regeneration.
The fundamental engineering disciplines in the EVs are different from ICE vehicles — we will need far higher competence in Power Electronics and Electrical Machines in EVs as compared to the average ICE vehicles.
Battery engineering in EVs requires higher skills in chemistry as well as control systems — while control systems are not uncommon in ICE vehicles and in a few cases require as much skills, the type of engineering to control electric power trains differs from ICE power trains.
Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) vehicles are not going to disappear in a few years. Migration to fully electric or zero-emission power trains is going to take at least two if not three decades.
The EVs have started having an impact on sales of ICE for the past three to four years globally — including in India. This is gradually going to increase over the years with more and more applications and segments in the automotive market finding it necessary to EVs over time. For different segments of auto products and for different use cases, the period of migration will differ.
For example, if you look at cars, EVs will make sense much earlier to taxi fleets in cities while they will take longer to start making sense to individual personal passenger vehicle users.
Similarly, in buses, they already make good sense for city public transport and for long-distance buses — but will take another few years before making sense for school buses and staff buses.
So, this is a journey that has started. It is not a short-term transformation.
As mentioned, ICE is not going to go away in a hurry. There are far too many areas where EVs do not yet make any sense to the owner or the user of the vehicle. And, since ICE business and regulatory needs are going to continue evolving, we will need good automotive engineers there anyway. But the new EV power train skills are also required as every use case and product segment starts moving to electric and so EV engineers are also required.
As of date, EV engineers are few, and so they are being paid a 30% premium on compensation. But, as the market evolves and more people are trained, say, over 10 years, this will normalise and the compensations will become comparable. It is a simple question of demand and supply, as in any other employment.
We used to hire a lot of people in IT at a premium just a couple of years ago. Now it is not that hot a job anymore except in new areas like AI, ML, Data Science and so on. At the end of the day, what is required are good engineers who are strong in physics, chemistry and engineering.
(Prof Karthick Athmanathan, Professor of Practice, Department of Engineering Design, the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras. Views expressed are his own)
