EV Technology Intern

During my spring semester of 2025, I had the opportunity to intern at Volvo Car USA, thanks to NJ Pathways and Bergen Community College. I worked at the Methods Workshop and the Battery Lifecycle Services team with three other interns.

For one, I came out with changing my major. This experience is what pushed me over to switch to electrical engineering. I still love working with computers and programming, but working at the Workshop deepened my interest in cars. (This spark really kicked off when I got my driver’s license and worked on an Electric Vehicle Conversion project, but working directly with cars fanned the flames.)

Besides the switch, I saw how relevant problem-solving was outside of programming. Diagnosing car issues can be creative: my co-worker poured a bottle of water along the crevices of the liftgate to determine where a leak was coming from. I also got more comfortable with power tools as when working on EVC, I mostly stuck with programming and small electronics. And I really enjoyed test driving the cars.

I had so much fun (shout-out to my cool coworkers)… and I didn’t know I would enjoy manual work so much. I liked waking up early to drive to work. There was no traffic. :D