I talked to Marc Pons, a shop owner we work with in North Carolina, about this subject recently. If you read the Wall Street Journal or Automotive News out of Detroit, both well respected news outlets, you will see a theme. EV’s are on their way and there is no stopping it. You can slow it down with news stories bought and paid for by any large corporation that would not benefit, but electric drive is the future. You may choose not to believe it. Volvo and Tesla are believers. Many more OEM’s are making future plans that see the future as I do. But what about independent auto repair shops? Where do you fit? How will this change your business? If you have 3 techs and they work 49 weeks a year and your customers are loyal you need about 1,000 cars per tech, if your customer has one car each. Many customers are not loyal so 2,000 cars per tech is more like it. ACDC owns 2 pure EVs, a 2011 Nissan Leaf and a 2017 Chevy Bolt. If these cars were the only ones on the road and you only serviced them you would need about 10,000 loyal customers per tech if everything else was equal. That means you will have 90% less work. If I am off by 20% and pure EVs need more work than that, you will need 7,000 cars per tech. That changes your business model and the shop must change too. Can you still make it? Sure if we lose 70% to 90% of our service bays and techs? Will that happen? It is happening now. Which side do you want to be on?
