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NEXT-GENERATION MECHANICS
I plan on being a mechanic in a few years and I was wondering: with Bush talking about converting cars to hydrogen and selling more hybrids, how would this affect my future occupation? Will it still exist even with all those hydrogen cars on the road? — Eric S., Moline, Ill.

Don’t trade in your ratchet set just yet, Eric. Despite the hype and hoopla about hydrogen, it will be decades -– at least -– before hydrogen replaces gasoline as the motor fuel of choice. (Some energy analysts believe it may not happen in your lifetime.)

For starters, to switch to hydrogen cars, we’ll have to figure out how to develop a system of making and distributing enough hydrogen to keep the more than 130 million cars on the road topped off. Even if that system were in place today, it would take years for automakers to replace all the gasoline-powered cars out there.

You will soon see a lot more gas-electric hybrids on the road, especially if gasoline prices stay above $2 a gallon. But of the roughly 17 million cars expected to be sold this year, you can still count the number of new hybrids sold in the tens of thousands. Even if gasoline prices shot up to $5 a gallon, it would take automakers years to ramp up hybrid production to 17 million cars a year.

And no matter what technological changes are made to the automobile, you can rest assured that any piece of machinery they come up with will break down at some point. Most of the technologies that will eventually replace the 100-year-old internal combustion engine are still being developed. And the faster automakers try to ramp up production of cutting-edge technology, the more likely they are to turn out cars that need repair. So we foresee a bright future for auto mechanics.

Still, tomorrow’s mechanics will need a completely different set of skills than the generation that could diagnose a bad carburetor just by listening. As carburetors have gone the way of tail fins, cars have become computers on wheels. Increased fuel efficiency, advanced combustion processes, the introduction of electric-driven drive trains — all of these changes will require a higher level of technical skill from the folks we’ll all turn to when these vehicles eventually conk out.

Our guess is you’ll still have to be handy with a torque wrench. And you won’t need a degree in chemical engineering to fix a fuel cell. But you’d better learn all you can about computer diagnostics and electric drive trains. Tomorrow’s mechanics will almost certainly need more training — and more frequent retooling — to service the next generation of cars. 

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