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Duke Marine engineers will soon work in the electric car sector, where they’ll be building and driving a fleet of electric buses.
The graduates from Duke’s Engineering College of the Arts and Sciences will work with Ford to design, build and operate electric buses, and will work for other electric vehicle companies such as General Motors and Tesla.
“The idea is to create a new paradigm for transportation,” Duke University said in a statement.
“We believe that electric vehicles are a technology of the future, but they will have to compete with conventional buses for the same kind of passengers.
We need to innovate and find new ways to achieve that.”
Duke and Ford plan to start selling the buses in 2018.
Duke has more than a dozen electric buses in its fleet, and Ford is the only major automaker that has been testing a full electric vehicle.
The university will not be involved in manufacturing the buses.
Duke’s graduate students will work in electrical engineering and mechanical engineering.
They’ll be working for Ford, which has its own electric vehicle, the XC90, which is slated to go on sale in 2019.
