Independent car maintenance with Hevra
Hey, friends. Greg, host of the show here. So recently, I had to take my car to the dealership. There was a recall on the cooling system, and, my aircon also started kinda misbehaving. That made me wonder.
Speaker 1:The car is fine. Everything's great, and there's nothing wrong with it apart from, you know, the driver's Seat squeaking a little bit, but that's just wear and tear. But, because my aircon was out, I just felt like this should be covered by the warranty because that cools the battery as well. And that made me think, What about the maintenance of this car, you know, beyond the, this that statutory or whatever, the default that you get, you know, when you buy the car? What if I wanted to be a bit more nerdy or just have somebody who has bit more interest in things?
Speaker 1:You know, dealerships just offer you cookie cutter service because they're for people who mostly don't care. You just wanna bring your car. It's like a utility. Right? But I do care, and there's people who care around as well.
Speaker 1:So that Reminded me of the, the time when I started driving EV. Can't remember exactly the date, but It was my 1st Kent EV meetup, and I ran into a a person called Pete, who basically said to me, or maybe somebody actually referred me to him saying, oh, he he started this thing, and he's a mechanic, and he knows a lot about fixing electric cars. And I kinda my ear packed up. And, well, spoiler alert, we're gonna be talking to Pete today, to Pete and Matt. And, Pete started hybrid, electric vehicle repair alliance, HVRA, which is a UK and European organization that helps people with fixing their cars, you know, after the warranty or sort of outside of the, the dealership network.
Speaker 1:And, I thought, Hang on. You know, this issue that I'm having, how else would I be treated if I went to a Hebra garage instead of going to the, Kia Garage. I mean, spoiler alert, the recalls can barely be dealt with at the at the garage, and, you know, there's no cost to you as an owner. So, there's just no issues. But the, anything else, I think you might, you know, look into taking a car to have a have a garage in the future instead of, servicing it on a Kia garage, or one of them, dealership garage in the future.
Speaker 1:You know, just listen to this episode. You might find something You will like and you might learn something. So without further ado,
Speaker 2:Peter, I think I think I think we met at, a meetup a while ago, back 2019 or 18, one of the Kent EV meetups. Oh, Weiwei. Listen. Yeah.
Speaker 3:My name is Peter Melville, and, I was the Founder of Evra, about 6 years ago. And, these days, my job title is engineering director, so I'm in charge of Anything technical to do with everything that we do, basically.
Speaker 2:What about you, Matt?
Speaker 4:Yeah. I'm Matt from, Cedar Electric. So, yeah, we've got some car garages, just doing all the run of the mill normal stuff, and we do a lot of diagnostics on a lot of different manufacturers. So then we started, the company, Cedar Electric, where we're just doing electric vehicles, in trying to get involved with some more in-depth, repairs on the electric vehicles.
Speaker 2:Okay. That's cool. So the, I mean, the first question that I have to ask is, you know, Why why having inter independent garages fixing electric cars? You know? Everyone tells me that electric cars are scary.
Speaker 2:There are Ipass on the wheel, black boxes. You know? You've heard it all, I'm sure. Can you, like, demystify some of that stuff?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So, if I go back to the beginning when it all started, my background is In, fixing electrical problems on behalf of other garages, basically. So then when I bought an electric vehicle myself, I sort of had a foot in both camps, if you like. So I, it I was familiar with garages, how they worked and, what they were good at, what they struggled with, and all that sort of stuff. And, equally, being an electric vehicle driver, I was speaking, to other electric vehicle drivers, and I was aware of how things needed to look from their side.
Speaker 3:So, Evra, basically, the idea was to to combine these 2 things so that we could build something that was was good for the garages and good for the drivers as well.
Speaker 2:Okay. And it's not it's not only just electric cars. It's obviously hybrids as well, although, you know, we're all trying to push people to to drive pure electric as much as it
Speaker 3:Yeah. Well well, if I'm honest, I I'm not the biggest fan of of hybrids myself, but, the the reason we cover hybrids as well is because there there is a, technical similarity. Systems, the braking systems and stuff you get at Harvard, so very similar to what you get in electric. So they're they're a sort of great way of, Practicing, for want of a better word, you know, building up your experience that is completely relevant to electric vehicles. It's a great way for garages to get return on investment rather than purely focusing on Electric vehicles.
Speaker 3:And and also, I think it's important as well. I think if you buy a hybrid car and nobody's able to fix it, I think that would be a a problem for you then buying an electric car. You would in in your mind, you would think, I don't wanna own an electric car because I've had a hybrid, and nobody could fix it. Therefore, if you know, that would put me off, and that's what we're trying to avoid.
Speaker 2:That that's that's that's good. I mean yeah. Matt, so you you guys are doing just electric cars or is it hybrids as well? I do
Speaker 4:as well. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So, in answer to your question of why we decided to do the electric cars, Yeah.
Speaker 4:I suppose for us, it's just natural progression, and we've always liked to We we done we do a lot of diagnostics on new cars as well. It's always on the latest technology. And also we got a lot of technicians that are quite Well skilled, and, I think if they weren't doing electric cars, if we wouldn't be that happy. So it's a natural progression that we need to Stay with the technology movement of the motor industry. So yeah.
Speaker 4:So we've started diving into it. And I think What's quite exciting about the independent doing electric vehicles is we can offer something to the dealer that's different repair, and it can often save Quite a lot of money, and that's quite an exciting thing that I don't think we really got as much in the Combustion engine world.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 4:Yeah. That's certainly a new avenue that's quite exciting.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So the the the the the the the myth of the car that cannot be fixed and is just an iPad on the wheels and the black box is obviously That's not true. Right? I mean, I don't have to say that to to my audience, but, you know, I've got qualified people here to to attest to this. Yeah.
Speaker 3:I mean, Mechanically, as I'm I'm sure you and your audience know, mechanically, they're they're relatively simple. There's far fewer moving parts than there are on a traditional car. Yeah. Obviously, in terms of the electronics, they they are fairly complex. But, I mean, the nice thing, For us in in garages and those of us who are fixing cars is, although electric vehicles are different, we've We've been gradually getting used to electronics on cars for the last 30 years or so.
Speaker 3:It's not like we've gone from, You know, a section 2 CV to a Tesla Model 3. You know, we we've we've had a very gradual, transition, in order to get used to the electronics and and Yeah. Get familiar with testing it and repairing it and, precautions and stuff like that. So
Speaker 2:Yeah. I mean, that said, the, Cars had, you know, complicated electronics boxes and and, control modules for, I don't know. Since probably 2000 I don't know. 9 19 nineties, I would I would guess. Late 19 nineties?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So it it yeah. It Started off gradually with you know, you start having a computer for the engine, and then they start adding airbags and ABS. And then it it it got more and more. So and then they start joining more together with networks.
Speaker 3:So it's It it's been quite a gradual thing, and, unfortunately, not all garages have kept up. But for those Who have, like like Sida? It's it this is just the next step really in in a path that we've been following for a long time.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So, I mean, so so speaking of of Hevra, actually, I presume, SEDAR is part of the Hevra group. Right? You've got the sticker. Yeah.
Speaker 4:Yeah. We've been there. As soon as we started electric, we joined Hedorah straight away.
Speaker 2:So, you know, if I have anybody in in my audience who, you know, has been or or is, running in a garage or, you know, knows somebody who is running a garage, and they're kinda like, oh, I don't know about this electric stuff. It'll take it will put, you know, take me out of business when I have to start looking at electric cars. Is what what's the, What does the Hevra provides to an independent garage? Do you approach independent garages, or do you do they have to approach you? What is the what is it you know, How does what what does it look like?
Speaker 2:What is Hevra to, like, the what I'm trying to say is basically, it's like a 2 pronged question. Like, on one hand, you've got, garage owners, and on the other hand, As a as a car owner, if I drive, you know, past a garage that has a HEVERR sticker on it, I need to know what's what's happening. Like, why is that sticker there? What does it give me? That make
Speaker 3:sense? Yeah. Of course. So, so when when this all started, it was, it was basically impossible to know if a garage was any good at fixing electric cars. So if you if you had 1, It was you know, unless you knew sort of the right probing questions to ask a garage, it it was very difficult to sort of know if it was in safe hands, if you like.
Speaker 3:And that that, Hevral was was designed to fix that problem. So, there are 2 sides to it, and, This applies whether you're a garage or or whether you're a customer, really. So, the first side is is sort of customer facing side of it where we We have the map on the website where you can find the garage in your area. That's one of our members. And, you know, many of our garages have signs up and stuff like that.
Speaker 3:So that's, the customer face inside of it. The the garage face inside of it is is essentially we we aim to provide anything that the garage would need In order to to do a good job on that car. So, what that generally consists of is, for the carriers to sign up with us, They, have to have an industry standard qualification. So, that's typically a nationally recognized level 3 electric vehicle repair qualification. They also need to meet meet some other criteria to do with their business and tools and stuff like that.
Speaker 3:But the the the technical qualification is, obviously, somebody on-site needs to hold that qualification. What we then do is we provide written documentation. So, let's say you've you've gone away. You've done a training course. On the training course, they had a Nissan LEAF, for example.
Speaker 3:You learn all about that car. You you got everything else. You come back to your workshop and, customer brings in a Jaguar I PACE, for example. That vehicle is It is very different to the vehicle that you did your training on, and our documentation, effectively provides sort of a quick guide as to This is what you need to know about this particular car. So, if you got a job coming in the next day, you can sort of quickly have a look.
Speaker 3:Right? But what do I need to know about this car? How does the So my management work, how are the motors and the wheels? And if it's a hybrid, how does it the engine integrate with the motors and the wheels and everything else? Is there anything else that's particular to that car, stuff like the electrical architecture networks and all all that sort of stuff?
Speaker 3:So, That's that obviously gives the the individual technician a a sort of head start in terms of repairing that vehicle. We Then we also provide the garage with our technical support service. So, let's say you're you're in that situation where you've done your training, you've you've a car, and you've you've looked at the documentation for that car, but you're still not quite sure where to go next. The garage thing can then get in touch with us, And, we'll then, help that carriage fix that car. And this is a really important part of it because this It's really important for the garages because it's a real benefit to membership, having someone, help them with that vehicle.
Speaker 3:It's a benefit to us Because this is how we learn how to focus our research and development. This is how we write our documentation because we, every time we do this, we learn a little bit more about That particular vehicle, that particular fault, or, we might develop a new test specifically for that vehicle. And all that thing goes out to help the rest of the network. And and, obviously, the biggest benefit of all, really, is is to the owner of the car who Gets their car fixed because in in my, previous job where I I used to go to garages and and fix cars on a sort of individual basis, Sometimes you would have a car that wasn't necessarily worth spending the time on. So you think, well, this this job might turn out to be just a simple Broke or something like that, but it's gonna take me 5 hours to find out.
Speaker 3:And then after that 5 hours, it might turn out to be some really expensive parts. And so often the owner of the car would say, oh, well, it's an old car. I I don't think I'll bother. And one of the benefits of Havra Is that the 1st time we see a particular problem, we can put the effort in. We we can go back and forth to that garage.
Speaker 3:We can do all the legwork and, Work out everything we need to know about that system. The garage can then do the tests and find what's wrong with the car. Once we've done all that hard work once, That information can then be shared across the network and effectively keep more cars on the road and keep more garages in work.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I'm again, I've never worked actually for the, I've never worked as a mechanic or you know, I've got electrical engineering background, but that's So I understand I understand how that works. But the, from my limited chats with with different carriages and and OEM carriages as well as, you know, for a particular OEM like Kia or, I don't know, a Ford. They would have that ability within the network. Right?
Speaker 2:So If you bring your car to a Ford's garage, they would be able to talk to somebody in Ford and have a documentation, obviously, just for Ford cars. But they, but they're kinda limited in within that brand. Do you have access to all that stuff or, as well? Or,
Speaker 3:Yeah. So there's a legal requirement, Called the motor vehicle block exemption order that effectively means, manufacturers aren't allowed to Provide preferential treatment to their own dealerships, in order to keep a a level playing field in terms of Competition, they have to make that information available to independent garages as well. So so our members will be able to, via a a service manual or a wiring diagram. All these things are are obviously in electronic format these days, but they'd be able to buy those things from the manufacturer. And, we find the information from the manufacturer.
Speaker 3:Sometimes it's really good. Sometimes it's not so good. It's very, very rarely updated. So what they would do is a manufacturer will make a car, they will then make all the documentation for that car, And then that will be it forever, generally. Whereas whereas our documentation will evolve.
Speaker 3:So, If we start to see that a particular fault becomes more common, we will actually, alter our test plans and our documentation to say, Well, actually, checklist first because this is we we've worked out through experience. This is the most likely fault, so check that first. And if that's okay, you can then go on to do some other tests and things like that. And And that's a constantly evolving thing to improve it and and upgrade it.
Speaker 2:Okay. So, Mars, I I've you know? So sorry. Like, we've just been chatting here. But, like, what is your experience with, like, electric cars?
Speaker 2:And what got you into fixing electric cars? Like and how do you Yeah. Let let let's just start with that, and we can follow on from there.
Speaker 4:Okay. What was fixing the electric cars? Well, I say just a natural progression progression. We're always trying to be at the top of our game. So we were never not gonna go into electric cars.
Speaker 4:I suppose the question was when and how profitable was it gonna be. Yeah. Well, that was The first thing we were gonna start with, and so we started gently, should I say, and we had to have her support because At the start, I suppose, right at the beginning, you are going into a little bit of an unknown. Sometimes you might not be as efficient as you'd like to be. But then we found it a really, really interesting and good industry.
Speaker 4:Very enjoyable. And I say and I think I I just get excited about what you can save customers compared to. So there's so many instances where a customer might have an inverter or a battery full, Been to the dealer, but then you replace the component. Whereas, you know, ourselves and with heavy support, We often will open up that component and repair it instead of replacing it. And, you know, you can save, you know, 5, £10,000 sometimes for a customer, Which also keeps a EV car on the road.
Speaker 4:Yeah. It's just for an economical repair. So that's something exciting, That can be really good. So that's that's probably why we keep doing it outside. And that there's, You know, so much more that can be done that the main dealers don't as such.
Speaker 4:So yeah.
Speaker 2:I heard about the the the legislation that you you mentioned or the lawyer you mentioned, Pete, but I didn't know what it's called off top
Speaker 1:of my head. I wouldn't remember. I'm sure
Speaker 2:you have to you have to explain that to people all the time. How does the the maintenance of of, you know, ICE car or internal combustion car compare to EV from your perspective as an independent garage? Is it is it just the same, because you, you know, will you have access to, like, all the parts and and and documentation, or Is it simpler? You know? Obviously, the worry is that this is what I've heard from some of the carriages that I went to in the past It's you know, now that people drive are gonna drive electric, they're gonna go out of business because the people just won't turn up because the cars are much more reliable.
Speaker 2:Apart from that, once the car turns up and there's something wrong with it, how how does it compare to to, to fixing a nice car?
Speaker 4:So in terms of the as I suppose, service inside of it, yes, you're gonna do less. So if you were to a garage that only done servicing, you might Struggle a bit, but I don't think there's any less work as such. Overall, I think you just gotta be a bit more dynamic and more versatile and do more stuff On vehicles than you probably used to. I think, certainly, what I noticed is, labor times are probably Higher on some of these cars, when you're doing extensive repairs. But, yeah, the servicing costs, Pete, you'd agree, is a lot less on EV cars, especially the the time to do it and the parts required is is less.
Speaker 4:But, yeah, one thing, obviously, you do need to bear in mind is that you're Carrying out the whereas, on ICE cars, a lot of time, once you're in out of warranty of 3 years, you might have done the an interim service or a major service or a full service, whatever. Sometimes the garage would almost make their own service package. Whereas what we find with EV cars is we're always doing OEM service, manufacturer servicing, furthering the sheet because, you know, a lot of these batteries have got 8 year warranties, so we're making sure we always follow the manufacturer guide onto the service. That's probably a big shift In doing an EV service from an ICE engine service, but, in terms of can you do it? Yeah.
Speaker 4:Of course, can't. As long as you're you're geared up to do it.
Speaker 2:Yeah. This is skipping some questions that I have on the list, but the but you you mentioned a very good point that people always ask about is, And if I buy a brand new, I don't know, Kia in iniro today Yeah. They will sell you a a a 3 year, servicing plan, which is, like, 700 or £800 or something. Ridiculously high. Can I just bring the car to an independent carriage and keep my warranty, or, are there any restrictions on that?
Speaker 4:No. As long as they're carrying out the exact service sheet per manufacturer Okay. Then there there's no no no problem there. Sometimes they do ask for a a, like, a a battery evaluation, which you might need to use a dealer tool for. But as long as you've got that, which we we do, And then it's not a problem.
Speaker 4:Yes, sir. I suppose sometimes you might maybe not have the tooling, and that would be a shift for the garage. You'd need to invest in some tooling, But the tooling's always available. But if you were to buy every tool for every manufacturer, it might be whether it's cost effective. I suppose it it depends on what what your business is and what what you do it.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I I mean, you know, I don't wanna put anybody on the spots because, obviously, there's just so many variants and so many possibilities. I'm sure there's some good there's There's loads of good stories and some buzz stories, like like, with everything. The other question that I always hear is like, but, you know, but if I service my car with an independent character and I have a warranty claim After 3 years or 4 years on my powertrain and the battery, can OEM actually say, no. It's been serviced incorrectly by, you know, Joe in a in Tonbridge or, you know,
Speaker 4:No. As long as you're, I say, following the manufacture to service sheet. So we always print that off and follow it to to the point, and they're using OEM parts or the equivalent to, then as as long as you're carrying out that, I I can't see any problems. Would you agree with that, Pete? Yeah.
Speaker 3:So that this is Covered by the motor vehicle block exemption order that I mentioned. And, yeah, you can you can have your car Maintained by an independent without invalidating the warranty. And and, actually, if something fails and that's covered by the warranty and the manufacturer refuses the claim, if it if it did end up going to court and all that sort of stuff, the the manufacturer actually has to prove that it was down to incorrect maintenance that the fault Occurred. So, let's say, for example, you went through an independent garage, And they did something wrong on your service, and then a year later, your windscreen wiper motor failed. They would have to prove that the windscreen wiper motor failed because of what was done wrong on the service.
Speaker 3:Even even if it it was clear that the service had been done wrong, It would have to be a direct cause of that for them to, invalidate the warranty on that coupon.
Speaker 2:I mean, just just to be clear, I haven't heard of anybody who's been refused For that reason, it's just to No. It's purely hypothetical question, but it's a question that people will ask and do ask. With with my, personally, with my leasing plans that I had on the car, I had to go to the queue. I mean, it was part of the package, so you pre it was pre prepaid, so I'd you know, I didn't have to go there, but it was already paid for.
Speaker 3:So this is kinda And And that's an important thing to point out with, if the car's leased, is that, Sometimes and it and it's worth checking the paperwork. Sometimes the leasing company will actually specify that they want it to be serviced by a main dealer or Something like that. And and at the end of the day, although it's nothing to do with the warranty, but at the end of the day, it's their car. So under the terms of your lease, you you may find that that there are things like I'm blessed. But it but if it's your car and it's, and it's the ones you're concerned about, then there's there's no issues.
Speaker 2:You you hear on the in the media all the time that, oh, yeah. You know, electric Cars, we're gonna have to replace the batteries in them and after and then give x number of years on them. But, you know, there there are cars that are, like, 10 years old, like Model S's, some some of them. The other one is Nissan LEAF that's, you know, especially the 24 30 kilowatt hour, models. The the batteries were in the Nissan made some engineering choices, but let's just put it this way, business choices, that, I don't think paid out very or worked out very well for, for those batteries.
Speaker 2:So, have you had anybody in a 10 year old's Model S turning up and saying, can you replace me the the whole battery or or, you know, a battery warning light comes on, and Tesla told me it's gonna be $8, or buy a new car and you any stories to that effects that you can talk about?
Speaker 3:Yeah. I think there's there's 2 separate things here. So, there's there's basically 2 things that can go wrong with the battery. One of them is a fault, in which case, you know, your car works perfectly one day and then the next day doesn't work. And and the other one is degradation, which the car still works.
Speaker 3:But, you know, every year when you do your holiday and you do your long drive, you realize you have to stop a little bit Sooner because the, because the battery's degraded. False, we we can generally fix. So, the Tesla Model s you mentioned, we, we didn't used to be able to repair those batteries, but now we can. There's something that we've worked on, and we've we've worked out how to repair them, and we've repaired a few of those. Again, we've we've repaired various other batteries where things such as the circuit boards and the contactors and and things other than the cells inside the battery pack have have failed, and, we we can open that up.
Speaker 3:We can do the repair. We can reseal it and, get that, battery back in the car. In terms of degradation, it's, it it, depends exactly what's happened, really. So sometimes we'll find That, one cell has particularly degraded, and the rest of the pack is in Relatively good, e even if it's not as new, but it's in relatively good condition. And in that situation, We can take that battery apart.
Speaker 3:We can replace our cell, and we can get the car back on the road. The other thing that we do Sometimes find is sometimes all of the cells have just degraded a little bit. And, obviously, the only solution to that really is is to replace all of the cells, which which is a more expensive To be honest, that that that is a harder thing to fix, in in terms of being able to fix it within the customer's budget. But I mean, to be honest, Generally speaking, what what's happened is there's enough demand for cars that do short journeys that people just tend to change the use of the car So that, a car that perhaps was someone's main car 10 years ago is now someone else's car just for taking the kids to school and popping to the shops. Car, you know, at 10 years old sort of thing.
Speaker 3:But, a battery replacement is It's certainly something that we can do, but most people find it's not the best option for them. Most people just, will decide to change what they use the car for or or get a different car.
Speaker 2:Matt, do you have any experience with, any any any people coming with the super old Model S's or Oh, Nissan LEAFS, that you know, where the cell fails. So
Speaker 4:Yeah. So Nissan LEAFS, the 24 kilowatts we've upgraded is Quite a few cars to the 40 kilowatt. So there's a conversion kit that enables that. That takes their range up to about 170 miles, so it's quite good. But that's quite an expensive repair, and that's peak where it has degraded, isn't it?
Speaker 4:And then a repair isn't viable on that 24. Mhmm.
Speaker 3:What what's nice with that is the customer is paying quite a lot of money, but they're actually getting a car that's better than it was when it was new. Aren't they?
Speaker 4:Yeah. So what a few scenarios where that's happened is often they've weighed up a 40 kilowatt hour leaf And for I'm happy with my car. It's very clean, very tidy. It's been MOT. There's no advisories.
Speaker 4:I'd rather just put a 40 kilowatt hour battery in it, save some money. And then their 24 kilowatt hour battery, they might use for other sources, you know, a Powerwall and stuff or try and sell it on and recoup some money. So That's obviously quite a viable solution for that. The 30 kilowatt hours, we've done some sales and we have fixed them on the 30 kilowatt hour lease. That seems to be Fairly common, doesn't it, for the middle sales at the back to fail?
Speaker 4:With the Teslas, I don't know. I I I haven't I've done quite a few repairs on more or less batteries now. I haven't come across a degraded one yet, Pete, have you? I've just come across failed ones more than I've not
Speaker 3:seen one that's excessively degraded. No. It's it's purely been repairs on those. Yeah.
Speaker 4:And we've managed to do some different repairs on them. And I think even the cheapest one was about £2,600 or something to do A repair on the whole battery, which is not mega money. So yeah. And again, that's a good thing about being with ever an an independent because With Tesla, it's obviously a new battery, which is around 14, $15, I think, isn't it? Sorry.
Speaker 4:Not that. So, yeah, quite a saving there. So, yeah, there's definitely options. But, yeah, I I think, I don't know what you think, babe, but I think the early technology degrades, and I don't know if we're gonna see the same in the Technology we've got out at the moment in 10 years' time. I don't
Speaker 3:know if we're gonna see that. The the faults we're seeing on cars that are 10 years old now, We won't necessarily see on cars that are new now in 10 years' time because, obviously, the technology is is improving fairly quickly. The biggest The changes in in terms of battery degradation, the biggest things that appear to affect it is what sort of cooling system the battery has And, what sort of charge and discharge rates the battery sees. And if you double the size of the battery, It it can do the same amount of work with half the effort, if that makes sense. Therefore, if you have 2 cars that are the same and one of them the batteries to us the size, that battery is working.
Speaker 3:That factory is putting in a lot less effort. So, you know, if you take, for example, a Volkswagen eGolf And then you take the Golf GTE, which is the same car, but it's a plug in hybrid rather than a full electric. You could drive both of those cars at 30 miles an hour, And the the e Golf is is barely breaking a sweat, and the the GTE is is going as hard as it can because that that is as much as that battery can put out. And, Obviously, over the last 10 years, EV batteries have got a lot bigger. Therefore, the effective load on them, what we call the c rate, the the charge and discharge rates, have effectively become, less effort for the batteries.
Speaker 3:The the other thing I mentioned is the cooling system. So, 10 years ago, we there were quite a few cars around that didn't have any battery cooling system at all. So the the Nissan Leaf is one of them. The, e Golf is another. And, So the the Peugeot Citroen models didn't didn't have any cooling on them.
Speaker 3:And then some cars had air cooling where it would just take air from inside the car and blow out through the pack. The air cooling has has virtually disappeared because it means you need to leave space in the battery for the air to circulate. So in order to fit a bigger battery in the car, like, I had to get rid of all the airspace. So liquid cooling is is, by far the most common type now. And with the benefit of hindsight, we can look back at the the Tesla Model S we mentioned, Which we haven't particularly seen high levels of degradation.
Speaker 3:And we can say, well, actually, they were liquid cooled, and it was a large capacity, which is The format for other manufacturers in the main are now following.
Speaker 2:And just to just to clarify or or kind of extend to what you said, Peter. The It's not the the whole pack that has to work less. It's individual cells basically have less discharge, which translates to the whole, you know, thing just being sitting there just being, you know, twiddling their thumbs when you're driving 30 miles an hour. Yes. Or sometimes just being recharged if you drive down the down the road.
Speaker 2:You know, given that EVs typically require far less maintenance than ICE cars, which I think we all have to agree on, could you Speak about or enumerate all the key things that you still think needs, like, regular inspection and upkeep, You know, things that, you know, a a typical own owner of an EV has to think about compared to a ICE car.
Speaker 3:Okay. If you are Servicing an ice car, you have various things that you need to change like, the filters for the engine and stuff like that, and then you'll you'll have lots Checks as well. So a lot of the things on a ice car service are just checks. And on electric vehicle, basically, you you don't have so many things that need to be changed, But you you still have most of the things that need to be checked. So, I mean, certainly, you wanna check your tires, brakes, Suspension and steering.
Speaker 3:The brakes are particularly, a thing to keep an eye on with electric vehicles because as we we all know that, regenerative Braking can do a lot of the braking for us. Therefore, we we don't have the brake pads cleaning the discs as we would have done in the old days, with a, you know, a traditional sort of automatic car. We're sort of on the brake all the time. And Equally, the brakes don't get as hot, so that means it doesn't boil off the moisture. So corrosion on the brakes, can be a little bit of a factor.
Speaker 3:It's not a major issue, but it's something that's Certainly worth checking every service and acting on, if you do find an issue. So in terms of the chassis checks, Would would you agree, Matt, it's basically tires, brakes, suspension, steering?
Speaker 4:Yeah. On the EV stuff, with the weight of the battery, you tend to get a lot more, issues with weird alignment, which seems to be part of the service schedules on EV cars where it wasn't on ICE engines. It's more of a a check with alignment, which is Quite important, especially when you're getting abnormal tire wear and going through tires when you don't need to.
Speaker 2:Do EVs actually have a beefier I mean, they probably have a beefier suspension. Right? Does that, help with the wheel alignment or just makes it worth?
Speaker 4:I think, yeah, it's designed differently, isn't it, to hold that weight? And, obviously, the shift on acceleration, deceleration, and the actual amount of acceleration, deceleration, there's a lot more stress on your suspension and bushes and In tires.
Speaker 3:And I think, a lot of electric vehicles that are on the market now, and certainly the older ones, are based on existing petrol and diesel cars. And whilst Certain things have been upgraded and things like that. They perhaps haven't been upgraded as much as they should have done. So but you'll get certain Vehicles with a nice engine where and you get the same thing with electric vehicle. On the electric vehicle, the suspension will wear out at a slightly faster rate just because there's a bit more load on it.
Speaker 2:Okay. So yeah. So if you buy a new EV, you know, perhaps look for ones that that were purposely designed from ground up to be an EV rather than a I think they call them multi energy platforms.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Yeah. And and I I think, sometimes as well, it's it's the fact that you tend to notice these things more. So, for example, know, when you think about wheel alignment, if if you're going down the road with with your wheels like this, yes, it's gonna wear your tires out, but also it might have a noticeable effect on your range because, obviously, they're Not rolling as efficiently as they would do if they were in a straight line. And, you know, things like suspension and things like that, A tiny little noise.
Speaker 3:You might not have noticed if you had a great big diesel engine sort of masking that noise. But when you have a car that's much quieter, you do tend to notice Yeah. Listen, noises and things. And, to be honest, they can only really be a good thing for road safety because it means these sorts of issues will get noticed sooner. But moving on to the the other parts of the service, it it it gets sort of slightly vehicle specific after this point.
Speaker 3:But, Whatever sort of cooling systems and things like that the car has, it's it's worth doing a check because, you know, some vehicles like that, There there's a particular hybrid vehicle that's made by a well known German manufacturer. And, basically, if you if you have a cooler part split, then it will, it will cook the inverter in that car, and that will result in a very expensive repair. So whilst you you Can't preplan for everything, road conditions and stuff like that. It's it's worth looking at that sort of thing for a service to say, oh, actually, we can replace this Pipe that's £25 plus a bit of labor and a bit of coolant rather than having a a much, much more expensive repair lights down the line when when something's actually overheated. There there are some vehicle specific services as well.
Speaker 3:So there there's, some other hybrid vehicles we've seen as well where, because on electric vehicle, as you know, the the battery is normally under the floor and and takes up most of the floor of the car. Yeah. On a hybrid, the battery is much smaller, and it normally fits in the boot area. And, we have seen certain models where the sunroof drains block up. And then because the water can't run out the bottom of the car in the normal way, the water will sort of gradually fill up the boot area.
Speaker 3:And, of course, that's where the hybrid So you then start getting sort of issues like that. And those sorts of things can be prevented to a certain extent because when you get the car in for a service, you can make The sunroof drains are clear. Get rid of any leaves and debris that that might then later down the line cause that sort of expensive issue, so it's certainly worth keeping on top of those things.
Speaker 2:Interesting. Interesting. Any any stories like that, Mas? The
Speaker 4:Yeah. I literally written down roof drains here. It's on the manufacturer servicing to to unblock them. One thing I was gonna say, Pete, with the cooling is, The air conditioning servicing, is quite important because some of the batteries are air conditioning cool. And I found that you can have no gas in the system, and you don't even get a warning in.
Speaker 2:Yeah. It it
Speaker 4:yes. Go on. I don't know why they don't warn you that you're at a consistent low in that instance.
Speaker 3:I've noticed that on a few vehicles, something that's Quite critical to the operation of the vehicle. Doesn't give the driver any indication that it's gone wrong. Yeah. And that's obviously the manufacturer's decision to make it that way, but, that's another reason why these things need checking. And, also, if if you Suspect there's an issue with your car.
Speaker 3:It could be nothing, but it's it's worth getting it checked out before it becomes a bigger problem.
Speaker 4:Yeah. Especially when the air condition's cooling your battery, and it's not doing a very good job, and you don't even know. It's
Speaker 2:it's funny it's funny that you mentioned that because the my car was literally in service yesterday, on the recall, of the battery coolant. In early Kias, there was a they put in wrong coolant or one type of coolant, that could have classified or what whatever the word is. There could have been some, basically, stone chips or whatever or bits of you know? Well, what's the word that I'm looking for? Classification?
Speaker 2:No. It it sort
Speaker 3:of, yeah, crystallizes and and crystallizes all that restricts the flow. Yeah. That that, vehicle's got quite a clever feature on it actually because, It it monitors the speed of the coolant pumps. And if this speed is too high, It knows that there's a circulation issue because, obviously, if you if you imagine pumping something by hand, if it doesn't involve any effort at all, Then This
Speaker 2:is this, basically, that just
Speaker 3:a warning sign, and and the car will actually the car will actually spot that. So that one's that one's better than most in detecting Mhmm.
Speaker 2:I I had I had a warning once on the dashboards in that car saying something about the, the coolant stopped driving. I took you know, turn off the cars. The car stopped, and when I turned it back on again, everything was fine. The warning just went away. And I knew that the car is gonna have to go to the carriage because of that recall.
Speaker 2:But Oddly enough, a couple weeks after that, the aircon started making the night I quote literally my wife here making Darth Vader noises. So, the the recall yesterday, obviously, was free, because it was uncovered under warranty, but the, but I had to pay 220 something pounds for, regassing of the aircon because, that obviously failed as well, and that's not covered under warranty.
Speaker 3:But that's it is wear and tear. Yes.
Speaker 2:Yeah. It was they they said there was only 370 grams of, gas is supposed to be 1,000 something. And I was like, okay. Well, surely, that system is connected to the battery cooling system Somehow, I I presume that I mean, oh, you probably know much better than I do. But I presume so because there is no separate air cooling secretary in that car as far as I know.
Speaker 2:So I was kinda hoping that it's gonna be covered under under warranty. But, just going going back to that Question, actually, just out of my pure interest. If I was to bring that car to a Hevre garage and say, can you fix this recall under, you know, yourself rather than me bringing it to a Kia garage. Is that possible as well, or, does that have to be handled by a garage?
Speaker 3:No. That that would need to be done by an agent of the manufacturer Sure. Because there's no not not for any technical reason, but there's there's no system in place for an independent garage to be reimbursed or for the the right records to be kept on on recalls that have been done and stuff like that. So that would need to be done by our dealership.
Speaker 2:I mean, that's that's free of charge to the to the owner of the car anyway. So, obviously, there's no harm that way, but I'm sure well, hopefully, this will improve at some point because I think I had to wait about a month and a half for them to to see me because it's a procedure that takes the entire day, apparently. And, Yeah. The guy explained to me in details why, but, I'm not gonna, like, try to repeat what he was saying. But, basically, manufacturer says This should take 2 hours, and in practice, they found out they need to take much longer to actually do this properly.
Speaker 2:So, so just Going back to the the the question that I have here, and, again, I have quite few, so we're probably not gonna get through all of them. If somebody buys a a used EV, obviously, with with a nice car, you you, you know, you can go to a new carriage, and they'll check it if especially if I have somebody trusted. With EVs, again, everyone's kinda worried that it's a black box, and, you know, how do you assess the battery's State of health and and, you know, and the rest of the the the system. Is that something you see a lot of people bringing their their, EVs that they wanna buy on secondhand markers from somebody, and and they ask you, can you plug that in and see what's wrong with it or, you know, have a have a look? Have you seen a lot of a lot of that?
Speaker 2:And what sort of advice would you give somebody buying a secondhand car?
Speaker 4:No. I haven't had people asking for state health of a battery unless The battery has been faulty. And, yeah, and the other time we've measured state half of batteries when we're buying a battery to put in a vehicle, and we haven't really come across it in that sense. I think, It's often something I think would be good to know that figure before you buy a car. So I don't know if it's something that will happen where Used car dealers advertise the car with a state of health for the battery.
Speaker 4:It it it's definitely worthwhile. But, yeah, not something I've really Been asked for SSR.
Speaker 2:Okay. Okay. I mean, yeah, it seems like most people just buy the I I people are On one on one hand, worried about buying secondhand cars because they're worried about, you know, what they're gonna buy, will it last, basically, and all this you know? Especially lately, you hear all the Nonsense in the in the press that's probably based on, like, you know, 10 examples in the whole world. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And, yeah, and, you know, prepaid by, by wealthy companies that are afraid of losing the market. Oh, but the, And then the second thing is that, you know, new cars obviously, the the technology still progresses enough. New cars are very, It's just tempting to have the latest car because it will have a better range servicing and all that stuff. So, you know, perhaps we were in Early days of of secondhand EV ownership. I I tend to keep my cars more than so my car is now more than 3 years old, and we're probably gonna keep it for another 2 years at least, you know, because there's nothing wrong with it.
Speaker 2:It still has the same range as it had when it was brand new. And according to the, ODBC dongle, at least, the state of health is still a 100%. Although I I'm not entirely sure how I How much I trust that, assessment? But it has to be said it's a way better car than my first EV, which is a 30 kilowatt hour leaf when it comes to battery, technology. So I I don't know what, you know, what else I could say to people who are willing to buy a secondhand EV, and want to be kind of certain that it's not gonna go apart in a year or 2.
Speaker 4:I think, EVs are very reliable compared to how many we see fully compared to how many run the road. Don't know what you think, Pete. But, also, I think what happens is, you know, ice cars have been out for such a long time, and, you know, and you get a diesel with 40 DPF, and it's kind of We've normalized to it, and we it's not frowned upon. It's just part of owning a car, and you replace the brakes and you replace everything else that goes with it. And The actual cost of owning an EV car in terms of maintenance is gonna be a lot cheaper than a nice car for sure, And I think with less problems, personally, so I don't know why.
Speaker 4:You would be scared of making a change for that sense. I definitely don't think that the cost of Owning an EV car is more than a nice car. That's for sure. But I'm
Speaker 2:I'm sure if somebody amazing. Yeah. That's funny.
Speaker 3:You're right. And I think also if you, You know, if you buy it from a legitimate, place that's selling it, you'll have certain buyer protections in place. You know? It's sort of minimum 3 month warranty and all this sort of stuff. So I think, Yeah.
Speaker 3:It's just a case of, making sure you're happy with the car. And then if you buy it and and the worst does happen, then you yeah. You can take it back and get it Sort it or or refund it, sir.
Speaker 2:But I'm sure if somebody turned up with an a used EV and said, could you give it a have a look and tell me, you know, if there's anything wrong with that car. I'm sure you can do that for them as well. Right? But Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:The courage to do that. I'm always trying to encourage people to kinda go into fields of engineering or anything in in engineering related. On the in a similar vein, somebody actually asked me, so, legitimately, this question. It wasn't me spreading that in as as I usually do. So if anyone's pursuing a career in EV maintenance, what sort of skills, knowledge, areas would you recommend they focus on during their training?
Speaker 3:And,
Speaker 2:I mean, do they have to, like presumably, if somebody's starting to, you know, wants to be a mechanic now, it's like, a EV maintenance is like a given scale, but, you know, I still have to ask.
Speaker 4:So I our apprentices, in a minute, just go through The normal apprenticeship that they would have done 4, 5 years ago. But enrolled in their apprenticeship, they do come out with a level 2 and 3 EV qualification at the end of it as well. And I think it's still important with an EV card. You still got Your rolling chassis, your comfort electronics inside, everything that's still the same is is a nice car. And especially when you do work on EV cars and you're working on hybrids, you still need to know how an engine works.
Speaker 4:So I think a normal apprenticeship is still the right way to go. I'd probably just make sure you're working within a garage that is meaningly taking on EV cars and not pushing them away that's obviously what's gonna leave you behind is the hands on experience in the garage. So as long as you're working with a garage that's moving forwards, then The apprenticeship role should cover exactly what you need. Okay.
Speaker 2:Do you have any, people, like, you know, approaching you about with this sort of question, Peter?
Speaker 3:Yeah. We do. And I I would like to see, a ground up, EV training course, to be honest, where you you can come into it with no experience of cars and learn everything that you need to know. And, Unfortunately, at the moment, that isn't really the case. At the moment, if you wanna get into it, you basically have to learn about petrol and diesel cars and then sort of do the electric bit On the end.
Speaker 3:And I think, you know, we although we're involved in it every day, you have to remember as part of the bigger picture, we're we're still relatively early days, And I think, hopefully, that will that will change over time. I think, the way things may possibly develop is that in the future, we'll have, For one of a better word, a sort of chassis technician who deals with the brake suspension, steering, tires, and all that sort of stuff. And then we'll have a different type of technician who will deal with things like the high voltage systems, the networks, the thermal management systems. So one will deal with the sort of, More, sort of physical type of work and the other one with the more sort of thinking and Investigating type work. But, again, I think that's I think that's something for the future that once once things are much more mainstream and the majority of cars and garages are electric.
Speaker 2:That's yeah. That that's interesting. I mean, that kinda does make sense. The one the one thing that I noticed, you know, with ICE cars, like like Gilmatt mentioned, They've been around for such a long time. Everything's a bit of a, you know, a normal thing.
Speaker 2:But there's also I don't know. At least to me, most of these cars seem to be very similar in nature. Like, you know, there isn't, If you if you strip away the the chassis and, like, the colors and, you know, an interior, I think cars are Ice cars are cheaper to manufacture because, probably there's, like, 3 companies in the world who that make engine blocks and Most of the components and, you know, OEM manufacturers just kinda just just slap it together and add a bit of the flavor to it. Whereas with My feeling is with with electric cars, they're still it's still early days, and there's still way more variation between models and and makes. This is just my, you know, pure speculation, pretty much because I I have 0 experience taking cars apart and comparing them.
Speaker 2:Would you agree with with that that speculation? And if you do given the variety of them, you know, does that make your life way more difficult as a as an independent carriage?
Speaker 3:I I would agree with you. There's much more variety, and I I think that's, that's always something that happens with a bit of new technology. Different manufacturers try different things, and then eventually, they sort of start converging on the things The other the best mix of the various compromises if you like. Because, if you go back about 20 years In when sort of diesel started becoming popular, Matt, you'll probably remember this. You you you sort of had, you sort of had the common row and you had the pump dues and then you had the sort of electronic injection pump types and it I'm not gonna go into too much details.
Speaker 3:That's that's not what we're talking about. But it's just an example of how We had a variety of different technologies, and then eventually, they sort of converged, and they all just started making basically the same. And, I think you're right. With with electric vehicles, we've we've seen far more variety. And I think it's gonna from a, technician's point of view, it makes it much, much more interesting to have variety of different types of systems, but it it can catch you off Got it a little bit.
Speaker 3:And this is this is partly why we have the vehicle guides that I mentioned earlier to explain the differences between every car because there are a lot of them, and it Can potentially catch you out if you're not familiar with with how something works. I think going forward, it's Actually, something that we'll probably see a bit less of because we're starting to see certain things like the way, Manufacturers measure the voltages of the individual cells, the way the manufacturers call the batteries. They used to be more of a variety, and you can see that the manufacturers are Tending to pick the ones that, are preferable for various reasons, and the other ones are starting to disappear. So I think it's only a matter of time before they all become a bit more similar. E even if they're very different in terms of their appearance and their features and things, I think in terms of the technical stuff, they will will get a lot more similar.
Speaker 3:But,
Speaker 4:yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And and I'm sure that's gonna lower the, the manufacturing costs as well massively, right,
Speaker 3:If you can make I mean, if you if you look at the complexity of a modern ice car, the only reason they're cheap is because they make so many of them. Like, if you wanted to make 1 in your shed, it It would take you forever. But
Speaker 2:But bonus question before we we finish the if you had to, like, say or pick 1 or 2 things that would make, EV manufacturing oh, no. EV maintenance, sorry, not manufacturing, way easier for you. What would it be like if you if you could talk to, you know, all of the OEMs and say, just do this 1, 2, 3 things, and our lives will be way easier. What would what would it be?
Speaker 3:One thing, we we sometimes find difficult that if anything has actually become harder since working on ICE vehicles Is there sometimes you want to measure a particular voltage or something, and you can't get to the bit you need to get to. And, of course, you can take it all apart, but then you can't measure what you wanted to measure because you wanna measure it while it's while it's operating. Yeah. So, obviously, they have to factor in things like water tightness and safety and things like this, but but maybe a few more windows where we could get into would be 1. And, if I'm allowed to if I'm allowed to have another one as well, one one thing that's that's a lot easier is, Tesla, the way you program new components because, generally, when you fit a new component on a vehicle, you'll need to program it the car to make sure it's on the right software level at the side of the car.
Speaker 3:Not not just Tesla, but but all vehicles and not just EV, actually, IT as well. You'll fit a new component, and you'll need to program it to make sure it's software level when it's matched to the other components in the car or whatever it is for that particular part. And, Tesla have actually made that process A lot slicker than most other manufacturers, and I personally would like to see other manufacturers follow.
Speaker 2:What about you, Matt?
Speaker 4:Tonight, it's hard. I suppose if you were doing 1 manufacturer, your life would be quite easy, I think, because you can get on board with how they do things, get the right tool in and that. When you're covering a high range of manufacture justice, often it's the tool, and that's the restriction. So You need to invest in a lot of different tooling sometimes, and even just things like servicing. Sometimes you just need I did a tool to do a battery evaluation sometimes, and I wish there was maybe a more, not OBD read.
Speaker 4:That was generic for all vehicles. Standard. Exactly. Yeah. It would make life a bit easier in that sense, because I think it should be in interest to do so a bit because I think There's always gonna be independents that need to service these cars.
Speaker 4:And so, it's for the service inside, but I think it should be made fairly easy because You wanna make EV owners' experience easy, easier than having to be restricted and find a garage that can, can't do it, and Etcetera, sir.
Speaker 2:Okay. So just OEMs open up your your data, basically, and give give access you have better access to independent carriages.
Speaker 4:They they they give you access. It's just the investment to do it sometimes. It's Yeah.
Speaker 2:Then then you unify your tools, basically, or you know?
Speaker 4:Where yeah.
Speaker 2:I I suppose once the, the components are a bit more common and the same or similar, might it might be easier than I don't know. But, you know, I'm trying to I'm trying to put a a hopeful thread in there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Alright. I think that one thing that will get easier is, the cars are being made in far greater numbers now, especially when you consider like, if you look at the Peugeot Citroen range, for example, you you've got small cars, bigger cars, vans, and everything that all have very similar powertrains. And I think things like that once Certainly, from our point of view, if we if we wanna repair, inverters and on board chargers and things like that, once we've got our head around one particular one, then That's gonna have so many applications, which I think has been a struggle for remanufacturing in the past. Because in the grand scheme of things, some of these vehicles, there aren't that many on the roads, So that should improve. The more cars are on the road, the more of a market there is for remanufacturing.
Speaker 4:And another thing I think that should be improved in general, don't you think, Pete, is just the charging network to help EV drivers a bit. I think, the the manufacturers are making amazing cars, coming up with these, Like, they must be investing so much money and come up with these really slick, great cars. And then sometimes stuff they haven't got control of, The charging network out of their system, lets it down a bit sometimes, and it's a shame because, yeah, that's something they haven't got control of it. But
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's the, that's the downside of how of having a model like what was OEMs do compared to Tesla where they control everything, the car, the charging network, And the software as well on both ends so they can make that experience much slicker. But yeah. I mean, put it this way.
Speaker 2:Compared to what it used to be like when I started driving EVs the late 2015. I can I can comfortably drive now my car? I mean, my car can do I can jump into it and drive basically to Yorkshire without having to stop for, like, 4 and a half hours and, you know, and still have about 10% of the battery left. Like, back in the day when I when I had the Nissan LEAF 30 kilowatt hour, it was, it was a bit harder and and 24 car, 4 kilowatt hour before that that I that I had on loan. It was hard to drive that car, you know, to a pub in Sussex and back to back home without having to recharge on the way back in.
Speaker 2:So, Yeah. The yeah. There's there's some, you know, horror stories that I hear about charging, networks where especially at peak times when people have to queue and all that, but, there's just way more charges now available, so I always tell people just stop more often. Don't go to the places everybody else is going to, and and you'll be fine. But, yeah, There's there's there's still loads that needs to be improved, but I think we're still in early days.
Speaker 2:Thank you guys for your time, first of all. But, if you can plug in yourself and, you know, where people can find you, and how people can get a hold of you if they have more questions or more you know? Or They're in the industry. They wanna talk to you about anything.
Speaker 3:Yes. So if you're interested in any more information about Hefra, you can visit our website, which is www.hefra.org.uk. Or if you're outside the UK, it's hevra.eu. And all the garages on there, we've we've Make sure they're qualified, and we provide them with our technical support and share experiences across the network.
Speaker 4:Yeah. So, Yeah. If you do wanna get in contact, obviously, you can go through our website, cedarelectric.co.uk or our social media. We're always at the end of that, which is also cedarelectric . Yeah.
Speaker 4:And then that's probably the best way to contact us, really, or email me at matt@cedalelectric.co.uk.
Speaker 2:Cool. Thank you guys for your time.
Speaker 4:Thank you.
