It’s been hard to ignore the conversation surrounding electric vehicles in the automotive repair space. Sooner or later, they’ll begin rolling through your bay doors—if one hasn’t already. As a business, it’s important to prepare yourself for a growing consumer demographic.
Krystyna Kubran, a motorcycle racer and mechanical engineer, founded her company 352 Innovations to help shops with just that. After years of studying EVs and working with them, she believes that independent shops play a crucial role in the EV transition; the question is, where will yours fit in that?
Repairing the Training Gap
Having a career as an engineer in which she built, designed, and serviced diesel-electric locomotives, Kubran knows her stuff. She began to realize that the vehicles she was working on operated similarly to most electric vehicles, having a control system that manages the power.
Leading up to the pandemic, her brother was thinking about opening his own auto repair shop. Kubran—who swears by his talent to work with vehicles—had an interesting proposition.
“I told him, ‘Hey, I'll help you run it.’ And I said, ‘Let's do custom clean energy conversions,’” recalls Kubran. “‘I'm an engineer, you're a talented mechanic; and I wrench on things too.’ We grew up helping dad work on cars, you know? And so he was like, ‘Alright, cool.’”
Once the COVID-19 pandemic hit, the two ended up not pursuing the idea. But Kubran’s interest in EV repair would only grow.
A couple of years later, one of Kubran told one of her friends, a shop owner, about the idea. When he said he was unfamiliar with how to perform any sort of service on an EV, she eagerly invited him and his crew to let her train them.
As she began working with her friend and his techs, Kubran realized she had stumbled upon a huge gap of knowledge in the industry—one that she was equipped to combat.
“I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, what if other shops need help figuring out EVs?’ And so that's how the whole thing kind of exploded,” says Kubran. “It turned into something far bigger than I ever anticipated.”
A Whole New Animal
Kubran began reaching out to every shop owner she knew in the area, predominantly in rural areas of Northern California, Mendocino County, and Southern California, and asked them what their concerns were surrounding EVs.
She used this as the basis for the Roadmap to the Clean Vehicle World: a 500-page guide on how repair shops can expand their services to include not only EVs, but other clean vehicles such as hydrogen fuel cell cars. With the guide being updated quarterly, it’s constantly expanding, too.
The Roadmap begins with an overview of what EVs are, followed by what the major components of an EV are. Then comes what an EV’s service needs are.
“I figured they can see what's out there, [and] get a big picture of what's out there,” explains Kubran. “And then from there, they can kind of figure out, ‘Alright, what do I want to offer as a shop, and what kind of service can I do?’”
Once a shop understands and knows what services they’d like to offer to EVs, there’s lots more to know. Kubran’s Roadmap includes data on regulations related to EVs and different resources for shop owners and their technicians, such as training opportunities.
It concludes with a final section for those who are skeptical, providing consumer and market data on EV ownership.
“It’s kind of the snapshot of the tsunami that's going to hit them in five years,” describes Kubran. “And right now, they have a three-to-five-year window to figure out their place, make their decisions, and then implement all the work that needs to be done to get there.”
Essential factors for being able to competently perform EV work will take years to iron out. Training is the most obvious need, and something else shops may not realize is the different safety protocols and policies that will need to be in place for EVs.
For example: say someone brings in their EV for a simple brake job. While a conventional gas car wouldn’t need the fuel tank drained, an EV will need to be de-energized; otherwise, its regenerative braking could become re-energized upon a tire being spun, creating an unsafe situation.
It’s something a shop won’t want to ignore. Kubran recalls a conversation she recently had with her insurance agent about whether a shop would be held liable if an EV suffered a spontaneous fire overnight—something rare, but possible, in an event called thermal runaway.
“If the shop owner takes in the vehicle, takes it into their possession, and the battery has a problem that nobody knew about and burns the shop down, is the shop liable for that? And all the cars in their shop that burned up? And he said, ‘Yes, yes they are,’” Kubran says. “That is kind of terrifying.”
Calm Before the Storm
A business can try to ignore the existence of EVs all it likes, but if a growing part of its consumer base is transitioning to becoming EV drivers, a shop refusing to service them will be forced to turn away an increasing number of customers.
It’s easy to imagine a consumer feeling frustrated upon arriving at a professional, reputable repair shop and learning that they’re unable to work on their 2014 Nissan Leaf; especially when the availability of shops being able to safely operate on EVs can be few and far between. When a driver is in dire straits, stranded on the road, you want to be the one that can help them.
Kubran recalls a conversation she had with one shop owner, in which she asked him what he would do if a potential EV buyer came into their shop with questions about EVs. His response was that the shop has already had to do just that—several times.
“Somebody's traveling through and their EV breaks down. What are you going to do? Say, ‘No, sorry, you gotta have it towed 200 miles to the nearest dealership?’” Kubran continued. “And they say, ‘Yeah, we've already had to do that.’”
Demand for repairers that know how to safely handle EVs will only rise, and it isn’t something that is necessarily an obstacle; rather, an opportunity to capitalize on one of the biggest changes the automotive industry has seen. That’s part of what Kubran has tried to communicate with her Roadmap.
Especially as more EVs age out of warranty, and consumers look for affordability and trustworthiness, repair shops that are ahead of the curve may be laying the groundwork to make themselves a vital business in their community.
“There’s a huge opportunity here for a shop to grow into this new market; and especially since it's so brand new, being one of the first shops in town to support these vehicles could lead to tremendous success and a good reputation for the next 40-something years,” Kubran says. “Don't be afraid. Embrace it. It's already here. There's 150 different makes and models that are hitting U.S. markets by the end of this year.”
