Inside a brand-new EV-specific shop: How EV Lab is an example for the future

Electric vehicles are becoming a bigger part of the automotive landscape, and with that growth comes a rising demand for specialized service and repair. In this episode, our own Hannah Ryder Ross visits EV Lab in Langley, BC—a dedicated electric and hybrid vehicle repair shop created by the team behind Precision Auto Service.

We stopped by the shop with owner Scott Waddle for a tour of the new facility- and a conversation about the journey from adding EV capabilities to an established repair shop, to launching a standalone EV-focused business. Scott shares what drove the decision, the investments in training and equipment, the challenges of staying ahead in a rapidly evolving industry, and practical advice for shop owners and technicians looking to enter the EV service space. With guest host Hannah Ryder Ross.

Check out the materials mentioned in this episode: 

Indie Garage Oct/Nov 2023, featuring Precision Auto

Key Tips for EV Service Readiness in Your Shop

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:32

Hello, all and welcome to the Great Canadian Aftermarket Podcast. This is your guest host, Hannah Ryder Ross. Now, in the last few years, the amount of EVs on the road has grown exponentially, and of course, the need for more EV-specific service has rapidly grown as well. All over the country, some areas more than others, but um net growth overall. And we've much discussed some of the concerns here in the recent past that come up among shops and techs themselves. Where to start with and focus your training, where to invest, what to invest in people, in equipment, and how to handle this rapidly changing landscape. Um, some of you might remember that a few years ago in Indie Garage, we featured, um, put on the cover actually, a shop in BC called Precision Auto Service, located in Langley, which is on the outskirts of Metro Vancouver. Uh, this shop is owned and operated by Scott Waddle with his son Michael. Precision Auto made the cover for their effective and successful strategy of EV service focus. And this story was just into BC's EV market, which no surprise there was becoming more crucial to get involved in as a business. At the time of that printing, um, 2023, they had invested and dedicated a segment of their existing business to EVs with training, equipment, getting familiar with the vehicles. You know, they were just an excellent example of adapting for business and the customer's sake, and really just being curious about innovation in the future in general. I can definitely plug that story in the show notes here so you can get a little bit more background on them and get an idea of where they're coming from and how it started for them. It's pretty inspiring and shows a clear path to where they are now. So where are they now? Just this last June on a beautiful BC day, when I was visiting my old my own old city of Vancouver, I thought I'd pay them a visit out in Langley to see how their dedicated EV business has grown. And grown it has. They were about six months in to fully opening up this dedicated EV shop. They've been working on it for a while, but they've been in operation since about December. Um, they're no longer just a specialty in the well-established precision auto shop. EV Lab is just down the road from Precision, and it remains to be a specialized service and repair for electric and hybrid vehicles. Um they've got the specialized training, equipment, everything needed for the customer just in its own standalone building. And um the shop is still under renovation. These things take time, and the focus was getting the bays up and running. But I was still in solid conversation and tour with Scott about where they're at, and of course, some insight and quick advice for techs and shop owners on where to start. To open up, I had Scott refresh us a little bit about how they ended up with an EV-specific shop and why it was worthwhile for them. He emphasizes a few points from the business benefits and the needs of the EV customer.

SPEAKER_02 3:51

I looked at where the industry was going and where it was gonna be. And I, with the help of my son Michael, we're pretty convinced that EV was the future. So embrace the technology. If the customer is gonna be comfortable with us working on their vehicle, I want them to know that we're comfortable with the technology, the newest technology. And so having the electric vehicle wasn't saying you should buy one or you shouldn't. It was saying if we can work on these, we can work on whatever you got. We're good, right? So that was the goal there. And it grew. And of course, EDs did continue to grow, and so we just keep going from there. A couple things I saw going on, and to me, the custom, you know, our experience working on sprinter vans and German cars is that there's the type of customer that seeks out a specialist, and no matter what you do to try and convince the public that we can work on anything, you know, is uh uh uh a Jack of all trades' master of that. I guess that's you know the way to look at it. So we thought that we really proved our concept with the Sprinter vans by being a specialist in them. We drew them in from all over and we really got a name for them. We're gonna do the same thing with EVs, and so we thought, you know what, we need a standalone location. We're gonna run out of space, we're gonna run out of. You have to have uh a service advisor and a team of techs that are really um tuned to the EV customer, more so than the car. I believe that almost all the good techs working in this country can fix an EV. If they can read service information, follow directions, use a scan tool, they can fix the car. It doesn't matter what's powering it. But the customer is different. And so the customer's a little bit unique. Um they often will know more about their car than what the service staff will. That was proven over and over again by the sales staff at car dealerships. Nonetheless, the customers were unique, and so you had to understand EVs differently. So a service advisor that's really good with EVs has to understand what their union characteristics are. And so a standalone location with stand-alone text advisors was a big part of that. I also looked at the market, I saw the numbers. Metro Vancouver's numbers are the highest per capita in Canada. There's more EVs in Quebec than there is in BC, but that's just uh as a population thing. They Quebec is a larger population. Quebec also has very low electricity rates, as does BC. So, but per capita, Metro Vancouver is the highest in the country. There's lots of EVs here. You can't drive two minutes without seeing one. So um the numbers were there, and I just looked at it and said, if we don't do this, somebody else will. I want to be first to market. And so we got into it as quick as we can. We're the pretty much in the province. We're the only one that's really trying to do it. There's some other people dabbling in it here and there. Um but with an actual street front retail presence. We're gonna be the ones. Now, this building, we bought this uh at the end of last year. We moved in and opened for business in the beginning of December. So there's a lot of work that has to happen to it yet. But there is a plan and just renovations can happen and stuff. And signage even like that signage has been ordered, but hasn't showed up yet. This sign we just have temporary on there until we get that. So it's really early days because we have to build and equip the shop and hire the people and all these things that are going on. But the proof is we're gonna walk out there and the parking lot is pretty close to full. That shows me that we've already got going on.

SPEAKER_01 7:45

When we pulled up to the shop, a nice mid-sized building about 10 minutes down the road from their main shop, I could immediately see that the lot was pretty well occupied with client vehicles. The front of the building was still under renovation, but the bays were clearly up and running. Once we walked into the future service desk area, Scott told me just a little bit about the building, and we came upon a makeshift battery storage area. There were quite a few batteries in the process of being salvaged and recycled around us, and of course, Scott just explained that they've managed to recycle and repurpose virtually every battery, um, from being put into cars to being taken away and recycled. Pretty interesting. They were all around us, so he just had to mention it.

SPEAKER_02 8:29

This was a repair shop and an auto parts store in 1978 when it opened. Like we've found the history. There's a newspaper article about its grand opening. Two brothers owned it. They had an auto repair shop and then auto parts up front. And they ran it for there for several years, and another repair shop moved in and uh ran here. And then for a while, these guys who are doing this hot rod work here are the ones who did not. So, this is what we got for a waiting area for now. But again, we're we're not trying to hide that we're like this is a work in progress. It was a lot just to get where we were at, but uh um we are in the process of getting the permits and the engineering done. That's the model three batteries, Nissan Leaf battery, two Chevy volt batteries, KSOL battery, two more Nissan Leaf batteries. Um of these are waiting to be installed in cars, so these are takeouts that have to be recycled, repurposed. We have managed to repurpose every single battery. We usually get, we've always gotten paid for them, in fact.

SPEAKER_01 9:34

And then we made it into the bay. Of course, until I get a nice video up of the shop tour, I'll just have to describe what we were looking at. A clean working area about three lifts wide, with some techs currently working on a customer's fiat. Apologies for the background noise, but it was business as usual for them. I was just visiting. And when we were in the bay, I asked what immediately is different about this bay versus the traditional. And he mentions some of the different specific equipment and tools that are necessary in this EV space as he took us around.

SPEAKER_02 10:10

So everything we've learned is through on the job, networking, and just putting your time and studying the service information, getting to understand how we do this, what are they doing? They're all doing the same thing, just doing it slightly differently. But there's certain things that have to happen for any EV to work. And so both things are pretty standard. It doesn't matter if it's a new center or a Tesla or a Fiat 500.

SPEAKER_01 10:36

And just in terms of kind of overall what we're looking at in the EV-specific shop here, what are kind of the biggest differences between the regular, regular shop, even our other one, and here, like what's missing, what's here?

SPEAKER_02 10:53

Well, uh, I mean, certainly the lifting tables. You can see this one in action here. Um the average shop doesn't have a lifting table, but like I said, the precision, we've had a variation of that for a decade because there's so many uses for it once you have it. Drop many engines and transmissors drop out the fronts that are lifting them out the top. Um, so lifting table is a big part of it. Forklift is part of it. You like to try and manage when you see how big these bats- Well you do, you've seen how big these are, but you can't just have a gun on each corner lifting this thing, it's not gonna work. So the lifting table, the forklift. Obviously, the the safety equipment. So the PPE is most shops should have it because they're working on hybrids and other stuff, anyways. But the gloves, right? You of course you have to have those. The gloves uh have to be recertified, I think uh every year, every six months. Everything's electric here, including the forklift. Understanding how it works is hugely important because um there are lots of variables, and if you don't know the variables, then you're a risk. So the most important thing, the most important tool here is service information in your brain and reading and understanding what you're working on. Once you've done that, the rest becomes pretty standard stuff. Like I said, any tech could do it for sure.

SPEAKER_01 12:15

So he does mention the lifting tables, probably one of the crucial single pieces of equipment. Um, Michael Waddell and fellow top techs in the shop were busy in the process of removing and working on the battery in that aforementioned fiat, as well as pointing out the high voltage PPE involved. He does offer a bit more information later, of course, but he always emphasizes that service information and the training is the most important tool in the shop. We made it up to the parts storage area just for a tour of some of the pieces and parts they have on hand for common repairs. They're able to keep stock of the parts that move. But sourcing EV parts is still one of the challenges that shops face. Scott reiterated that a lot of these parts just aren't as readily available. You might have to be creative about sourcing them, but this all will result in delays and cost put on the customer, which then has to be managed from a customer service standpoint. He discusses that here as well.

SPEAKER_02 13:13

And it's more work for us from a service point of view, is where we have to explain that, yes, this part is costing you more money. At the end of the day, we can do most of these things for either faster or less expensive, sometimes both, but we don't promise. Either we're not in business to be the lowest price, we're in business to give the best service. Price and service go hand in hand with each other, and uh you have to be able to explain to the customer. But we have a you know a fair amount of aftermarket products here as well, right? All these items that we have here are because there is a reason. Uh, and so it's either availability or pricing or something unique. So contactors. These are the this is like a high voltage, high current relay. All EVs use contactors to turn the circuits high voltage on and off. We've found ways to find the suppliers of these from commercial electronic suppliers. We can actually open it up and replace just what's gone wrong. Now the OEs are like, no, no, no, you don't touch that, right? That's only for you know us or even at the dealer that'll fix those things. They just bolt them. This is six thousand dollars. Like we can fix it for a couple hundred dollars worth of parts because the contactor failed. We can buy the contactor from a commercial electronic supplier and do the fix and get the car back on the road for a third of the price quite easily, and the thing just keeps on going. So you you look at this, and they always made these rules because they didn't believe that techs, specifically the aftermarket, were smart enough or safe enough to fix these some logic for that, because I won't say that they're always wrong, but there is it's a shame to throw away a perfectly good car, keep this thing on the road for another 50, 100,000 kilometers for much less money in many cases.

SPEAKER_01 15:05

And as you heard, we ended up looking at some specific pieces, including contactors, and Scott took the opportunity to give me some insight on how adding electric parts knowledge into the service pipeline can affect the bottom line, both time and money, and you know, without saying the environmental impact, of course. We are recycling, we are reusing, we are making use of what we have on hand. And I left this in not just because of the part Scott was showing me specifically, but that it showed me the creativity in the inside at every scale that sets the shop apart and has gotten them where they are. Seeing where the kinks are, no matter how small, even when it comes to a specific component of a common part, and seeing it as something that they can address and improve all the time and make a big difference for the client and for the shop. And we wrapped up my visit with some final overall questions and comments from Scott. I was curious on a practical day-to-day level as to what they're seeing the most of from a repair and vehicle standpoint, which might be helpful for those still kind of wondering what their day looks like.

SPEAKER_02 16:15

So, what we see most of is anything high voltage. So that's the chargers, the heaters, the batteries, and the electric drive motors. Um we look through what we're working on here.

SPEAKER_00 16:26

Pretty light vehicles so far, just kind of all in the lot right now.

SPEAKER_02 16:30

Yeah, I mean these mid-sized STVs is pretty typical of what we're gonna see. And the suspension, it's it's control arms, it's bushings, it's uh tie rods.

SPEAKER_01 16:43

And finally, we ended up in conversation about the key areas that are top of mind. Some really useful insight here. Is there anything that you guys for for an independent shop that's looking to even set up any kind of equipment, or somebody who is interested in getting more of an EV focus, like any kind of advice or any anything to do with both equipment training mindset, even like what what's kind of that first step or the key?

SPEAKER_02 17:15

Mindset is absolutely first. My the first advice I give to anyone is that you have to have techs that want to do this. If you don't, it's a waste of time. You have to have techs that want to be UV techs, and then you need a service advisor that wants to be as well. So if you can't put those two together, it's gonna be a battle. Because the techs that I did not get into this business to work on those or to do that, and then investment, there's definitely some investment, but it's not for a well-equipped shop, it's not that big of an investment. Training, that is the one part. You are almost for sure to get to be really in the game, you're gonna have to travel for train. And so we've done that for years. That's not new for us. Um, the biggest training event on the West Coast is the Autobot Train Expo in Seattle every year. Traveling to train is for sure you're gonna have to do to get good training. Um, invest in people, invest in training. Then equipment. Yeah, I mean, the the average scan tool doesn't necessarily do a great job on EVs. Because what I say for most people is your minimum, Autel makes a really good EV add-on package. Uh launch, well, the launch EV, which we have there, we've only had it for a few months. Um on top of the Autel, that adds some capability. It's pretty similar to the Autel. And then OEM, if you're working on Tesla, you probably need to you need to buy a toolbox, even if you're just buying it short term when you need it. But having it full term, it's not very much anymore. It's uh it's I think it's 750 US for a year now. So the price has come down substantially. And so by having it, like you think, oh I'll buy it if I need it, and then you like you waste so much time when if you just would have had it, you would have saved time. It also opens up other capabilities and information sources. So good information, good scan tools, and the ability to read and interpret and read, read, read, like understand what you're working on. Once you've worked on a few, you'll see a lot of them. There's so many similarities and what's underneath the covers. So uh get familiar with the product, but people first. Okay, we've always been uh the shop that will share, and you know, part of that learning that we do is is the networking. And so it's it's definitely who you know and who knows you. And so that's super important. And I've gotten off the phone with so many other shops, giving them advice on what they need to do to find a problem or to fix a problem. And at the end of the call, they go, you know what, I think I'm just gonna send it to you. And so they um the network of people is is pretty important and it's at every level, it's good for business. Too many seekers. There's there's a few things that we've learned that you don't necessarily share with everybody every time, but generally speaking, we're we're pretty open with sharing what we've learned, sharing tools, given five minutes worth of time to help somebody else understand a problem, get the customer fixed and back on the road.

SPEAKER_01 20:39

That was our shop tour and conversation with Scott Waddle of EV Lab Shop in Langley. Lots of emphasis here on training and knowledge. At every turn, he brought up the people that are the most important. Not just formal training, but he directly mentions mindset involved. We've discussed how a shop can make some entry-level investments in equipment needed, those lifting tables, PPEs, scan tools, etc., parts in the closet, you know. But what Scott is communicating is that equipment and just rote training is not the most important aspect that got them to where they are now. It's about being resourceful, being curious, leveling up for the benefit of your business and as a tech and for surrounding customers, both new and existing. So thank you so much to Scott Waddle for the tour and for all of the insight. Uh, you can check them out in the show notes. I've got some stories published for you with more insight from other fellow expert techs about the key areas of EV service needed if you're still wanting to wrap your head around it, you're still curious. Once again, I am your guest host, Hannah Ryder Ross, and thank you as always for tuning in to the Great Canadian Aftermarket Podcast. See you in the next episode.

SPEAKER_00 21:53

You are listening to the Great Canadian Aftermarket Podcast, brought to you by the publishers of IndieGarage and Jobber Nation. Connect with us online at indiegarage.ca and jobber nation.ca, a brand of chat integrated media.