By CRM staff
Toronto, Ontario – April 16, 2019 – Electric vehicles are appearing more and more on Canadian roads. With the Canadian government pushing drivers to go green, the federal budget announced a $5,000 incentive to drivers buying a new electric or hydrogen-powered vehicle with a base price under $45,000. The fact is repairers could be seeing a lot more electric vehicles in the near future entering their shops with damages.
Collision Repair found that 45 percent of shop owners don’t have trained technicians to operate on electric vehicles and 45 percent also don’t see a priority to get to it right now.
“Availability and cost of training are big obstacles for our shop. We have to close the shop early and travel an hour or more to attend training,” one respondent wrote.
Although it seems the demand for electric vehicles is increasing there are still a lot of shops that don’t ever see these types of vehicles on roads near them let alone entering their shops.
In fact, 40 percent of the survey respondents said their shop doesn’t perform repairs on electric vehicles very often and only five percent of the respondents said they perform repairs on these vehicles every day.
About 30 percent of shop owners in the survey shared that they would be investing in the equipment and training in the next few years. But there was still a larger number of respondents stating that they aren’t worried about it right now.
According to some shop owners in rural areas, it doesn’t seem worth the investment.
“Not in the business plan any time soon. We are in a rural area where electric vehicles are not at all popular, dealers can’t sell them. The dealership is the only place that has a charging station, and none are expected roadside any time soon,” another wrote.
Another shop owner shared that the investment in electric vehicle repairs wasn’t at the top of his list, as the demand to repair vehicles up to OEM standards is becoming very high and the cost to do repairs on any new vehicle is becoming more complicated and expensive.
“We invested in all the equipment to repair aluminum over the last year and have repaired one Ford Truck, we are in a rural area where most people drive trucks won’t be investing in more equipment for electric vehicles till there is a great need to. That is if we don’t close the doors before then, as the cost of training and equipment to do our job correctly increase rapidly and the insurance labor and material rates remain as they have for five years, I’m beginning to question how we can survive,” another respondent commented.
