EVs are far from standardized. For mechanics, that’s an issue.
EVs are far from standardized. For mechanics, that’s an issue.
Look around you next time you’re out on the highway, and you might see a lot of electric vehicles — and not just Teslas. EVs already make up about 5% of the cars out on the road, and that number is only going to keep going up. From 2021 to 2022, the global EV market saw a 65% increase in sales and moved more than 10 million units.
And while consumers are jumping on board, mechanics might not be ready to handle that much of an influx of a whole new type of vehicle.
Emily Chung is the owner of AutoNiche, a repair shop in Markham, Ontario in Canada. She joined Marketplace’s Kai Ryssdal to talk about what the rollout of EVs has meant for mechanics. A transcript of their conversation can be found below and has been edited for clarity.
Kai Ryssdal: If I say electric vehicle to you, as an auto repair shop and auto repair technician, what do you think?
Emily Chung: I mean, I think there’s lots of opportunity in electric vehicles. And there’s always that piece about, “Okay, how are we going to repair them now?” So that’s always the crux of the issue for us.
Ryssdal: Well, yeah, let’s walk through that for you as a woman running a small business, you know. Let’s say some EV rolls in there. And maybe you’ve seen it before. Maybe you haven’t. Maybe it’s not a Tesla, right, there’s a zillion of those. But yeah, do you know what to do on these EVs?
Chung: So here’s the deal is that when you look at it compared to a conventional engine, that engine has been standardized for years over, right? In terms of the EV though, every manufacturer has their own way of doing things. And so it becomes more of a challenge for us as aftermarket technicians when we don’t have access to the information, because, essentially, I’m trying to diagnose a vehicle that I don’t really know how they made it, or what the specifications need to be.
Ryssdal: A lot of technicians and repair professionals have gone through training at the dealership. Is that something that EV dealers are doing for you yet? Or, sorry, at the manufacturer even?
Chung: Yeah, so a lot of right now is becoming more and more of a brand-specific type of industry, which is not really helpful for us. When you start getting to the road of making us, you know, brand-specific technicians, then it really does limit the amount of employment that we can have. Does that make sense?
Ryssdal: Yeah, no, it makes total sense. And let me just put on their consumer hat for a minute here, right? If I buy an EV from Brand X, does that mean, generally speaking, I have to deal with Brand X dealerships to get my car fixed? And I can’t take it to an aftermarket place like yours with the same expectation of service yet?
Chung: Yet, yeah, exactly. For now, because we don’t have access to a lot of the information, we can still do, for the most part, a lot of the maintenance side of things, you know, with EVs as they start becoming more prominent in the marketplace. And as they start aging, a lot of these vehicles will come to the aftermarket shop. And to be very honest with you, dealerships right now are swamped with recalls and warranty work. So for consumers, yeah, you may run into the issue where if your local garage doesn’t have access to training or information, then yeah, you will be stuck with going to, you know, very limited places like the dealership specifically to get that work done.
Ryssdal: Can I ask you the pipeline question? You know, there are vocational-technical schools, there are ways for people to get into the line of work that you are in. I don’t know how you got there. But is there that pipeline for EVs yet? There can’t be, right? I mean, it’s such a new market.
Chung: Well, that’s the thing is that as much as the government wants to push EVs, it’s almost like there’s so many factors happening in this industry, right? You have infrastructure, you have the supply side on the manufacturer side, but then you also have the repair side for us. And there are some colleges that already have EV training. At the same time, it’s very limited right now. And it’s only to the amount that the manufacturers want to release information as well.
Ryssdal: So say more about that.
Chung: So, because I don’t have information on this vehicle, it’s like asking me to do surgery on somebody who I don’t know where the organs and everything are located. Right? I’m going in blind almost. And to your point about the consumer, I think that’s something that they may not have considered just yet, because the EVs have only just recently taken off in popularity.
Ryssdal: Right, right. There is a seemingly inexhaustible supply of internal combustion engines out there, so this isn’t gonna affect your bottom line, right?
Chung: I don’t think it’ll affect the bottom line for now. At the same time, it’s definitely something, if we’re a forward-thinking shop, we’re moving into it. And the other piece about the consumer side is you might be thinking, “Okay, you know what, I have to head to the dealer to get the vehicle fixed,” and in my area, there’s, you know, a dealer that you could access relatively easily. That might be okay, but I’m thinking of people who are in more rural areas and to ask them to drive for, you know, an hour to get to the nearest dealer is not reasonable when there are garages local to them. So that’s the other piece that we think of when it comes to this issue.
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