Flaunt Electric Vehicles, Inc., is excited to have sent two employees to The Institute for Advanced Learning and Research (IALR), in Danville, VA for a training held by the Light Electric Vehicle Association (LEVA), to certify people as E-Bike technicians.
The IALR, partnering with the Southern Virginia Regional Alliance, is focused on helping spark economic transformation in Patrick, Franklin, Henry, Pittsylvania, Halifax, and Mecklenberg counties and the cities of Martinsville and Dansville.
LEVA is the light electric vehicle industry’s official association and is a mutual promotional effort on use and business of e-bikes. LEVA also handles training on an industry-wide basis. Recently, LEVA offered a brand new training program “Train the Trainer” aimed at training technicians on how to train others to become certified light electric vehicle techs. What this means is that Flaunt Electric Vehicles can now certify technicians, which simplifies the training and service process for dealers. Furthermore, while Flaunt’s technicians have always met the highest internal standards, the ability to certify them according to LEVA standards means that customers can see, at a glance, that Flaunt’s vehicle techs meet the same exacting standards as other LEVA certified vehicle techs.
The training was developed for LEVA by Dr. Don Gerhardt for LEVA members and E-Bike manufacturers and expands on earlier training that Dr. Gerhardt provided for universities and community colleges focusing on battery systems and electric vehicles. The goal of the training is to help raise technical proficiency across electric vehicle systems, so that technicians can handle every component of the repair process from diagnosis to repair of complex problems and trouble-shooting for connectivity issues. Since one of the primary complications that electric bike users face is battery life and when to replace the battery, a large part of the training focused on examining the battery to determine when it should be replaced as well as learning how to educate the consumers on their batteries to empower them to make an educated decision about replacement options.
Flaunt had two goals for the training: first, to get LEVA certification to be able to certify technicians at our dealerships; and second, to ensure that our own internal training was meeting or exceeding the standards we saw at the LEVA training.
