Are mechanics ready for electric vehicles?

Elec­tric vehi­cles are pow­er­ing ahead in the UK, fuelled by gov­ern­ment sup­port and con­sumer inter­est. But what will the chang­ing mar­ket mean for the auto­mo­tive repair sec­tor?

EVs have much in their favour. The envi­ron­men­tal ben­e­fits are well known, while upfront pur­chase costs are set to tum­ble in the next few years as bat­tery tech improves. The sec­tor also has offi­cial back­ing, with the gov­ern­ment announc­ing last Novem­ber that petrol and diesel cars would no longer be sold in the coun­try after 2030. Research by the ener­gy watch­dog Ofgem found that one in four British con­sumers planned to buy an elec­tric car in the next five years.

But for garages and mechan­ics, there’s a great deal to con­sid­er. 

Revenue impact

EVs have an elec­tric motor instead of an inter­nal com­bus­tion engine, which means they have far few­er mov­ing parts that can go wrong. That’s great news for con­sumers, as EVs cost at least 30% less to ser­vice and main­tain, accord­ing to research by data com­pa­ny KeeRe­sources. 

But it puts a whole chunk of rev­enue at risk for the auto­mo­tive repair sec­tor, says Pro­fes­sor Peter Wells, direc­tor of the Cen­tre for Auto­mo­tive Indus­try Research at Cardiff Busi­ness School, who spe­cialis­es in busi­ness and sus­tain­abil­i­ty. While motorists must still put their car through an annu­al MoT, it’s eas­i­er for an EV to pass, he says. 

 “You’re doing away with the oil change, the fil­ter change, exhaust changes, and you’re not wor­ry­ing about emis­sions, so that takes away a big part of the prob­lem. But it also takes away a big part of the rev­enue poten­tial for the garages.”

When bat­ter­ies do fail, they can be dif­fi­cult to repair. Mechan­ics need spe­cial­ist train­ing, giv­en the volt­ages involved, though Wells says it’s more a dif­fer­ent type of risk than an increased dan­ger.

 “Petrol and diesel vehi­cles also come with risks, espe­cial­ly of fire and fumes, which are extreme­ly tox­ic. It’s more a change of risk,” he says.

Train­ing for mechan­ics takes place in-house at man­u­fac­tur­ers or at tech­ni­cal col­leges, such as Coleg Cam­bria in Wrex­ham, an EV cen­tre of excel­lence, which has its own bat­tery sim­u­la­tor so trainees can learn safe­ly with­out risk­ing elec­tric shocks. 

But accord­ing to the RAC, just 5% of the UK’s 200,000 mechan­ics are qual­i­fied to work on elec­tric cars. “We’re def­i­nite­ly behind the curve,” says Wells, not­ing that mechan­ics face lots pre­sen­ta­tions and cours­es to get up to speed. “There’s not enough of them around, espe­cial­ly giv­en that brands like Vaux­hall are say­ing their entire fleet will be elec­tric by 2028. We haven’t got long.”

And it’s not just about train­ing up mechan­ics; work­ing on EVs also requires spe­cial­ist tools and equip­ment. “You’ve got to be able to drop these bat­tery packs out and they are big, heavy pieces of kit, much more so than an engine,” Wells says.

So will garages begin to spe­cialise in EVs alone, or upskill for the grow­ing sec­tor while retain­ing their tra­di­tion­al focus­es? A bit of both, says Wells. Petrol and diesel cars will still be around, “though the big debate is for how long. We’re already see­ing spe­cial­ist elec­tric used car sales, and I would expect to see more of that on the ser­vic­ing side”.

The changing breakdown landscape

When it comes to break­downs, EVs can suf­fer from many of the same prob­lems that afflict any car, says Sarah Win­ward-Kotecha, the RAC’s direc­tor of elec­tric vehi­cles. These include punc­tured tyres and oth­er wheel-relat­ed prob­lems, or run­ning down the 12-volt bat­tery by leav­ing the lights on. These low-lev­el prob­lems can be sort­ed at the road­side under the RAC’s reg­u­lar mem­ber­ship; you don’t need spe­cial­ist EV cov­er.

“But it is impor­tant dri­vers realise that unlike a con­ven­tion­al­ly-pow­ered car, you can’t just tow an EV (or a hybrid for that mat­ter) – it needs to be lift­ed, often with all wheels off the ground,” she says. Nor­mal­ly that would mean wait­ing for a flatbed truck, though the RAC is fit­ting more of its patrol fans with “All-Wheels-Up” tech­nol­o­gy that can recov­er the major­i­ty of EVs. 

Thou­sands of dri­vers run out of petrol and diesel every year. Could EVs suf­fer a sim­i­lar prob­lem, fre­quent­ly run­ning out of charge? It’s too ear­ly to say, accord­ing to Win­ward-Kotecha. 

 “What we do know is that sad­ly some dri­vers are reach­ing pub­lic charge points and dis­cov­er­ing they’re out of order and they don’t have enough charge left to get to a work­ing one,” she says. Some­times dri­vers also have prob­lems charg­ing at home overnight, she notes, with the RAC plan­ning to offer van-mount­ed EV charg­ers in about a fifth of its patrol vans next year.

At present EVs rep­re­sent a frac­tion of the company’s 2 mil­lion plus call­outs each year, says Win­ward-Kotecha. While it’s too soon to know for sure whether they break down less, it cer­tain­ly doesn’t appear they’re prone to more prob­lems. “With a lot few­er mov­ing parts than the dri­ve­train of a con­ven­tion­al­ly fuelled vehi­cle, we’d expect few­er mechan­i­cal break­downs, but it’s too ear­ly to say this with con­fi­dence,” she says. The RAC has also launched an EV leas­ing scheme and part­nered with British Gas to pro­vide a new elec­tric­i­ty tar­iff for EV dri­vers.

Learner drivers

The EV rev­o­lu­tion will be a learn­ing curve for vehi­cle own­ers. For exam­ple, one of the chal­lenges of buy­ing a used EV is know­ing how the bat­tery has been treat­ed; if some­thing goes wrong, dri­vers could face bat­tery replace­ment costs of about £5,000, says Wells. 

 “These are quite tricky issues to explain to con­sumers and I think it will be an inter­est­ing chal­lenge for the war­ran­ty com­pa­nies,” he says. “I can imag­ine there will be lots of dis­putes, as there is no way for the con­sumer to know what the life of that bat­tery has been like.”

The man­u­fac­tur­er itself will have this infor­ma­tion to hand, as they col­lect the rel­e­vant data every time the car is used. How­ev­er, it’s unclear if they will share this with own­ers or use it to encour­age own­ers to stick with their ser­vice net­work, rather than using inde­pen­dent garages. 

Every part of the sec­tor will have to evolve, from mechan­ics to sales­peo­ple to used car web­sites. 

“The whole indus­try is going to have to change,” says Wells.