By Lindsey Cooke
Toronto, Ontario — October 5, 2018 — Porsche presented some of their futuristic innovations and announcements at their first-ever certified collision conference in the world.
Held in Vancouver, the conference involved about 30 people from various Canadian Porsche certified repair shops.
Collision Repair caught up with Peter Woo, owner of Auto Excellence in Toronto about the details of the presentations and ideas that were discussed.
3D printers and virtual reality glasses were a couple of the interesting innovations that Porsche presented to the small group last Thursday.
“They’re moving ahead perhaps at the distribution level or even at the dealer level, and a lot of these parts that aren’t super high grade steel will be 3D printed,” Woo said.
If you order something, instead of having it come from Germany they’ll have the software and the tooling just to push a button and create that part.
Woo explained that Porsche said this will be something that should be coming very soon.
Beyond the 3D printer, Porsche revealed that there will be special glasses for technicians that will allow the Porsche teams from the headquarters in Germany and North America to see through his glasses and help him through his work if he is having troubles.
“Say the technician is unsure of the proper diagnostics, there is someone in Germany or North America that is actually seeing what he’s seeing and guiding him through the repair procedure.”
“Very sci-fish,” Woo remarked.
Porsche has also announced that Canada will be getting their own distribution warehouse. As of right now, everything comes from Porsche North America in the U.S. and Porsche Germany.
“But now it’s going to go from Porsche Germany straight to parts distribution here in Canada,” Woo told Collision Repair.
It will be the first distribution center direct from Germany located in Ontario, he confirmed.
“It’s going to help us with the delayed parts.”
The other significant announcement they had made was that they want to take on a broader footprint with electric vehicles.
“They said they want to take about 20 percent of a market share within the next five years,” Woo confirmed.
