Environmentally Friendly Vehicles and Training: A New Field for Driving Instructors and Car Mechanics?

摘要

It is a general fact, there has been a lot of progress in the degree of penetration of clean vehicles into the society, spurred mainly by general concern and stringent requirements for the reduction of the negative effects of the road transport sector on the environment and the reduction of fossil fuel reserves. This is expected to grow in the next decades, as the world is moving towards a sustainable hydrogen economy with the proliferation of fuel cell vehicles. However, as technology advances and the future of road transport is changing shape from what we are used today due to the application of new energy sources for the propulsion of vehicles, one should raise the question what these new facts would mean for the average vehicle user in general and for a number of professional groups associated with vehicles, in particular driving instructors and car mechanics. In this paper, an outline of an educational procedure dedicated to these professional groups is presented with the intension of acting as a roadmap for the development of the necessary training tools and methods, based on the already developed training material (intended for the average car user), developed within the on-going EU (Life-Environment Program) co-funded pilot project IMMACULATE.