It’s no secret that the world is moving towards electric vehicles. Electric vehicles are not only more environmentally-friendly, but they’re also cheaper to operate and maintain than traditional gasoline-powered cars. So it’s no surprise that many schools are considering adding electric vehicle charging stations to their campuses. If your child’s school is one of them, you may be wondering why they need an EV program.
It’s estimated that by 2030 there will be over 250 million electric cars on the road. That’s a lot of charging stations! Electric vehicles are the future, and it’s important for our children to be prepared for this new technology.
If your school doesn’t have an Electric Vehicle Charging Station yet, it’s time to make the switch. Switch Labs can help you get set up with the best Electric Vehicle Charging Station for your needs and budget.
Not only is this great for the environment, but it’s also a great way to teach STEM education in a hands-on way.Our reusable EV Kit is ideal for students interested in renewable energy, advanced technology, or automobile design. The Switch Lab teaches students how to work with their hands, solve problems, learn about systems, and gain experience in cutting-edge automotive technology. Contact us today to learn more about how Switch Vehicles can benefit your school.
As the summer comes to the Northern Hemisphere again, with the war in Ukraine, gas prices are at an all-time high that seems unconnected to the cost of oil by the barrel. In simplest terms, we are being ripped off at the pump right now, and it seems likely they’ll continue to cheat us for the foreseeable future. Considering how much of the oil industry is underwritten by our own government, it’s disgraceful to see gas prices climbing as high as $6 or more, and strange to see the loyalty customers have for the combustion engine range. At Switch Labs, we hope the American people will not forget this betrayal when it comes time to purchase their next vehicle, or in their ballot box.
In this age of advancing EV technology, one of the primary hurdles for selling EV technology has been the fear of running out of energy on a trip. We prefer the range of combustion engines, the convenience of limited stops on our travels, and quick refueling. EV support for long road trips may seem dangerous, especially in the deserts of the southwest. No one wants to risk being standard with a ‘bricked’ vehicle.
Even though the situation seems precarious, the truth is that EV charging is possible in most modern cities, and our highway system makes it possible to get from EV station to station. There are three levels of EV charging: household charging, standard charging, and supercharging. The first two are available practically everywhere now if you know where to look. The third one requires knowing specific locations and the site traffic level.
But this problem is relatively easy to overcome! Mobile apps are available that can help guide you safely to recharging stations all across the country. For example, PlugShare provides locations for all three charging types across the continental U.S. highway system. With some planning, you can set a route with minimal recharging and complete confidence in your journey.
Combined with sites like Roadtrippers, you can map your course with time to charge your vehicle. In addition, RV campsites can provide a helping hand when no actual station charging is available, with outlets accessible to your car. If you have an EV, take advantage of this and the technology– and renewable energy– at your disposal, and get out on the open road again this summer without fear of the pump!
Our reusable EV Kit is ideal for students interested in renewable energy, advanced technology, or automobile design. The Switch Lab teaches students how to work with their hands, solve problems, learn about systems, and gain experience in cutting-edge automotive technology. Contact us today to learn more about how Switch Vehicles can benefit your school.
There are many hallmarks of an excellent educational program for educators, elements that make young people fall in love with their coursework. When a subject engages the young people with the material they find interesting and timely, empowers them to grow as people, and challenges them to accomplish something they might not otherwise believe they could achieve, they’re apt to fall in love.
And those subjects are likely to stay with students for years to come. And sometimes, these programs have the power to give a student direction in an otherwise uncertain future. Consider the programs that your students love and cherish the most, and you’ll likely find these three elements at play.
Engagement
The first is that a loved program must engage the students. It’s something interesting, something that perhaps even their parents have not discovered. It’s got an element of the future to it — their future — and they can see the study as part of their life history.
Empowerment
The second is that it empowers students to do something they didn’t think they could do. For some groups, that’s a challenge like riding a zip line. For others, it’s working together to solve the puzzles that will allow them to find their way out of an escape room. The Switch Lab seminar challenges them to work together as a team to build a working car!
Challenge
The third is that it challenges students to use their teamwork, physical strength, and mental prowess to accomplish a task through cooperation while learning about the steps as they take them. Beyond being a test, this part of education is what students will retain the most: practical experience in problem-solving in a unique field.
The Switch Labs curriculum offers students all three of these essential elements. It challenges, empowers, and engages students in the world of Electric Vehicle repair and assembly. That’s why students love our program so much; it sees their potential and offers them a pioneer place in the future of technology.
Our reusable EV Kit is ideal for students interested in renewable energy, advanced technology, or automobile design. The Switch Lab teaches students how to work with their hands, solve problems, learn about systems, and gain experience in cutting-edge automotive technology. Contact us today to learn more about how Switch Vehicles can benefit your school.
The Many Advantages of the End of Internal Combustion Engines
There are so many advantages to ending the century-old fixation on combustion-based machines. In a century, our descendants will marvel that such a thing ever existed. “The engine actually explodes?!?” It’s time to grow beyond combustion when we create forward momentum, as the technology is available to us now.
There are numerous reasons to end the dependency of our nation’s workforce on fossil fuels. One key reason is the environmental crisis that decades of unchecked car emissions have created.
Environmental Collapse is Imminent.
The dinosaurs are extinct– but they didn’t wipe themselves out by consuming more than their share of the Earth’s rich resources. Their bodies shrank into the ground and, over millions of years, became the very oil that this planet’s apex predator, human beings, now consume at an irresponsible rate. There’s been so much talk in recent years about weather patterns and the eroding arctic shelf, but in the last two years that has ramped up significantly. Global warming is no joke. It is real, and it is coming to disrupt the American way of life significantly, and make some coastal cities uninhabitable.
Most states aren’t doing much, but we’re pleased to say that California is taking some steps in the near future. On a recent viewing of the masters, Mercedes Benz advertised their entire electric line– and ONLY their electric line. That’s huge progress. But likely, it’s too little, too late to save the way of life we now know. As a species, we’ve put off a solution so long in the name of unchecked capitalism that we’re trapped– climate change is coming, and it will render areas like Miami uninhabitable.
Humanity won’t walk away from global warming unscathed, but we can limit the damage by acting soon. We are the first species forced to deal with conditions we created that may make life grim. What we can do is make that period of misery shorter as we search for a way to reverse the damage we have done. The elimination of cars that accelerate carbon monoxide production will help us reach that goal.
We’ve Stayed with Internal Combustion Technology for Way Too Long.
After 100 years, the only real reason we are still stuck on combustion engines is that oil companies have worked to suppress electric vehicle technology. We could have also switched to pure electric in the car manufacturer collapse of 2008– but we didn’t. The reticence of moving to electric vehicles has given companies like ours wind for our sails.
The time to embrace this technology is now, and work to make sure we are not made dependent on finite, controlled resources again, so that our technology follows this trend and develops a better option to the electric someday.
The Incentives Are On Their Way
As the U.S. government works to switch us to Electric Vehicles, there will likely be more and more incentives to tip the balance. Beginning with improved parking spaces and possibly continuing with queue preference and on to tax breaks, there will come a time when the cost of maintaining an internal combustion engine will be far more than owning an electric one– and that time is fast approaching.
It’s Time to Consider New Energy and New Ideas.
Moving on from internal combustion will allow us to start developing better renewable-energy technology. This is our pre-crisis moment, where the smart folks will move to electric as soon as possible and begin to work with renewable energy in their daily lives (solar powered roofing, for instance). And Switch is teaching this technology to a generation of young students!
Our reusable EV Kit is ideal for students interested in renewable energy, advanced technology, or automobile design. The Switch Lab teaches students how to work with their hands, solve problems, learn about systems, and gain experience in cutting-edge automotive technology. Contact us today to learn more about how Switch Vehicles can benefit your school.
Lately, in our blog, we’ve gone over many of the perks of taking our Switch Labs course, primarily for the kids that attend, and how it will benefit them in the future. One area we haven’t touched on is how it helps adults, too– specifically, those connected to the kids going through the experience.
How the Switch Labs program improves the bond between teacher and student is evident to anyone who attends our training sessions. Although we mainly market our curriculum to teachers in schools, where we can teach to classrooms full of kids and develop the teacher/student bonds, we also offer the experience to parents who want a challenging project with their kid, one that they’ll remember long after the child has become an adult.
When kids hit their teens, there’s a disconnect with authority they place in their parents as they prepare to leave the branch out on their own. Seeing the world on equal ground forever changes the dynamic between child and parent. If you are reaching the point where your kid will soon be a full-grown adult, out of the home and on their own, you may have a dimly-remembered list of the things you always meant to do but didn’t do together– plans you made and never had time to accomplish, like writing a book, building a treehouse, a Wendy House, or designing a go-kart.
Those kinds of bonding experiences can slip through our fingers so quickly, and we don’t even recognize them until the time has long passed. Looking back generation-to-generation at the moments we missed, the lesson is to seize these moments when we can. The time we have gets eaten up so quickly in the daily grind of work, the procession of routine, and even in the glee of a family vacation. Working together on a unique project is different from time off together. It’s not just existing or being happy; it’s growing together.
If you have a son or daughter interested in technology and cars, our Switch Labs curriculum is an amazing journey you can take with them. Learning how an electric vehicle works and wiring on together with you to a schematic will teach them more than just how to assemble a car; it will teach them how to learn cooperatively, how mistakes can teach us solutions, how to manage our pride, and to change roles (from parent and child to supervisor and worker).
We’d love to allow you and your growing child to bond on a new-tech project together. Our reusable EV Kit is ideal for students interested in renewable energy, advanced technology, or automobile design. The Switch Lab teaches students how to work with their hands, solve problems, learn about systems, and gain experience in cutting-edge automotive technology. Contact us today to learn more about how Switch Vehicles can benefit your school.
The Switch Labs EV program is steadily being signed up by schools nationwide. Young adults are learning first-hand about this emerging new technology through our approved curriculum.
But what is the value of a Switch Labs certificate of Completion to these students? What can their certificate help them achieve in the end? Here are the three most significant benefits that our education can provide your students:
Understanding of EV tech – As an emerging tech field, it doesn’t hurt to enter a University, college, trade school, or apprenticeship to have some experience in the EV field already. Depending on which way your students want to go, they will gain an understanding of EV science that puts them ahead of most candidates they will be up against in placement competitions.
Development of STEM educational ideas – Our assembly course does considerably better than building an electric vehicle. It ticks all the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics boxes. What’s more, making a Switch Vehicle is a great way to see these individual disciplines working together in adult life.
Maturity of project dynamics – The students working on a Switch Labs project get a first-hand look at a cool, exciting project and the group dynamics involved. As some students step forward and some step back, it is helpful for future college students to see the social structure of a team at work and to be able to identify how communication breakdowns can damage or delay a group project. Even when everyone moves together in the same direction, errors can happen. The Switch Labs project helps young adults identify these obstacles and work to overcome them as a group!
The rewards that come from an education in EV are entirely dependent on what each student wants for themselves. Our reusable EV Kit is ideal for students interested in renewable energy, advanced technology, or automobile design. The Switch Lab teaches students how to work with their hands, solve problems, learn about systems, and gain experience in cutting-edge automotive technology. Contact us today to learn more about how Switch Vehicles can benefit your school.
As teachers return back to school, they are already beginning to plan the 2022-2023 school year. We have many educators and administrators who work diligently to bring our Switch Lab curriculum to their school.
This tells us that very few educators and administrators know just how much COVID-19 stimulus money still remains in education coffers, according to TheLearningCounsel.com. For those interested in running a curriculum based on building an electric vehicle, there are still billions of dollars in funding available to projects that enlighten and educate kids on the technology of electric cars.
Going into 2022, there was $157 billion set aside for STEM education that advances technology. If you’re an educator or an administrator looking for a technology-based curriculum that meets the standards for this funding, Switch Vehicles has just the program for you, and we can point you in the right direction to get funding for it, too!
And what could be better than a program that allows kids to not only build an electric vehicle but allows the school to keep the vehicle or sell it to an interested buyer?
Our reusable EV Kit is ideal for students interested in renewable energy, advanced technology, or automobile design. The Switch Lab teaches students how to work with their hands, solve problems, learn about systems, and gain experience in cutting-edge automotive technology. Contact us today to learn more about how Switch Vehicles can benefit your school.
EVs are finally turning a corner in the minds of U.S. car buyers. Gone is the stigma and the trepidation, to some degree. There’s excitement around the Tesla brand that has allowed our brand to rise and grow, and in the process, bring young engineering students into the process of building Electric Vehicles.
There are so many reasons to pull the trigger on combustion vehicles right now. It’s about environmentalism and getting a grip of our own market. No longer having our economy beholden to O.P.E.C. will be a massive factor in a positive U.S. future.
As of right now, there are a whopping 19 electric vehicles on the U.S. market, and only two of those are Teslas. That leaves so many options, including U.S. options, for those trying to avoid buying imported cars. And there are many different kinds of EVs for the market, too– not just the family sedan. There are SUVs, sports cars, hatchbacks, even a MINI.
The Volkswagen ID.4 has already sold out its first production run— which says a lot about the kind of machine Volkswagen is offering and how willing EV converts are to take advantage of it. I know someone who is absolutely beside himself with excitement over the Ford Mustang Mach-E, which says a lot for an American-made EV. The power that Ford has managed to put into an EV is impressive and should do a lot to shoo off the naysayers.
With the market beginning to open up, this is an excellent time to resolve to stop buying gas combustion vehicles (or even hybrids) and open up to the new line of readily-available EVs on the market. And if your needs are for a short-range runabout that can get you here and there, there’s also the Switch– certainly the cheapest of all the listed options!
Our reusable EV Kit is ideal for students interested in renewable energy, advanced technology, or automobile design. The Switch Lab teaches students how to work with their hands, solve problems, learn about systems, and gain experience in cutting-edge automotive technology. Contact us today to learn more about how Switch Vehicles can benefit your school.
Muscle cars are a big part of the American love for cars. “Popping the hood” to see powerful engines underneath is not only fun in some quarters, but it’s also absolutely titillating.
And why not? Internal combustion is a series of perfectly-timed explosions in an engine. The image of fuel-burning, internal combustion engines dragging down a strip is unlikely to go away any time soon, despite our constant edging towards the collapse of the ozone layer from a century of poor emissions control.
On the opposite side of the spectrum are electric cars. Considered by many to be tethered to their electric chargers, electric vehicles are still working to gain momentum in the car enthusiast community. One brand has been working very hard to change this stigma: Tesla.
Teslas, although reasonably priced, are still seen as muscle cars to many car lovers. They might not appear to have much in common with a Dodge Charger at first glance, but consider these elements:
The Cool Factor. Teslas are state of the art — even when you ignore their electric status. You’d be hard-pressed to name another car brand that has as many bells and whistles, from the key to the car (a little Hot Wheels-sized model of the car itself) to the touchscreen operations.
The Power. Teslas have a surprising amount of pickup for a non-internal combustion vehicle. To have a car available that eradicates the stigma of “golf cart'” thinking is excellent for all kinds of electric vehicles. It’s doubtful that EVs could race a muscle car effectively and win, but they’d be in the running — which is all the power most drivers need.
The Beauty. Although some people mock the Cybertruck, few would pass up a chance to drive one. Tesla builds exquisite cars with lots of wow to them, with a high dosage of sleek lines and luxury in the mix.
These three elements make Teslas on par with muscle cars, but then, there’s The Environmental Responsibility. Sure, some will argue that the construction of each Tesla leaves a significant carbon footprint, but driving one for years erases that footprint. And it gets drivers off of dependency on foreign oil — something we should have done way back in 2008 when Detroit collapsed. GM brands continued refining internal combustion and gave Tesla a jump-start on the market they might have cornered when they had the chance.
At Switch Labs, we see the elevation of the Tesla brand as a vital thing. The more we can get drivers interested in EVs, the more the next generation will begin to show an interest in learning to build and repair these vehicles.
Our reusable EV Kit is ideal for students interested in renewable energy, advanced technology, or automobile design. The Switch Lab teaches students how to work with their hands, solve problems, learn about systems, and gain experience in cutting-edge automotive technology. To learn more about how Switch Vehicles can benefit your school, contact us today.
The world is just beginning to feel the effects of Global warming. While many are still in denial, the science is irrefutable. The radical weather shifts we are experiencing and melting polar ice shelves are a definite harbinger that we’re in for some rough times ahead if we carry on as we have for the last century. Today, we’re speculating on that future– specifically, how Electric vehicles and hybrids will affect the market by the year 2031.
One factor in waking people to the global warming crisis is the Billionaire Space Race currently playing out between Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Elon Musk of Tesla, and Richard Branson of Virgin Airlines. Seeing the mega-wealthy spend their fortunes trying to escape the planet and colonize other worlds has even the most self-deluded deniers thinking twice.
Once most people recognize global warming is real, we can no longer ignore the environment for the convenience of mass capitalism. Internal combustion vehicles will one day fade into memory, as our society will be forced to make the ecologically sound choice of Electric Vehicles, or EVs for short.
It might surprise you to know that electric vehicles are generally more polluting to create than their combustion-based counterparts. However, EVs make up for it in their ability to use renewable energy to power themselves from then on. With Volvo switching to EV only in 2021, there is a feeling that the market is beginning to build to a wave of EV buying.
In some cities around the world, change is being demanded before the industry is even ready. One California city has banned the establishment of new gasoline stations in favor of electric ones. Environmentally conscious California cities are also beginning to demand gas vehicle sales stop in the next decade. Norway has already set its date and will ban new sales of gas vehicles in 2025 across the entire nation.
We’re moving to electric as the next big platform. How Hydrogen cars will affect that remains to be seen. Still, safety issues (which remain to be seen, but the ‘Hydrogen bomb’ headline almost writes itself), not to mention a higher cost, will ultimately make it a harder sell than the current crop of EVs.
The resistance to EVs from the current U.S. market seems to factor in the newness of the technology and the lack of seeing string representation for electric charging stations yet. It’s the way no one wanted to buy a Betamax when it became clear that VHS would be the way that most video stores rent and sell videos. For EVs, range anxiety is a factor, with 83% of people resisting the move to electric cars saying it’s about their fear of charging their vehicle regularly.
But the proven acceptance of EVs is winning, and in the next five years, we’re predicting that fuel stations will begin to change. It’s a bit like a stalemate. No one wants to make the first move before the market changes. But once the market is better than half EVs, expect your local gas stations to knuckle under quickly, lest they lose relevance.
When the market wave finally crests, every fuel chain will want to be riding it– with visions of dust bowl deserted gas stations in their head replaced with shiny new EV stations that didn’t wait too long.
Expect that by 2032, your corner gas station will still be going strong but shifting to make room for electric supercharging options. The price of gasoline will drop to near-COVID-19 levels, making the national average about $2/gallon. And when you see a new car on your street, it won’t be an internal combustion vehicle — it will be an EV.
Our reusable EV Kit is ideal for students interested in renewable energy, advanced technology, or automobile design. The Switch Lab teaches students how to work with their hands, solve problems, learn about systems, and gain experience in cutting-edge automotive technology. To learn more about how Switch Vehicles can benefit your school, contact us today.
