Ben Stone - insights into the EV market

Sheen is a second-generation family business, it wasn’t forced upon me though. I always had an interest in cars and started working in a shop from 13 sweeping floors until I was 16 when I undertook a Panel technician apprenticeship, the rest has been a natural progression.

We started to see EVs turn up in the driveway and off the back off tow trucks and we’ve had to prepare ourselves to understand how to treat them. It has gone from being the occasional job, to 1 in every 10 jobs. We started proper training in 2022 when there was a noticeable increase in not just hybrids but fully dedicated EVs. Now all 27 of our stores are equipped and trained to accept and work on EVs, which Is huge.

There isn’t a lot of industry awareness and we as a business had to proactively seek out the training providers to ensure we were safe when working on the cars but also ensuring safety wasn’t compromised for the customer. There is no real push or enforcement from the industry itself, there is a little more now, but it still has a long way to come.

There is a lot of battery, charging and connection testing before and after a job that is required, we’ve invested in software and training that the Panel Technicians and Management staff have received, but despite the training, we have a lot of people that aren’t confident in handling the high voltage cables. We are very much exposed to the risk both as workers and as a business and we know the risk to our customers if the work is not done correctly.

I think the training could be more in-depth and integrated at a trade school level. The transition of technology and automotive is exponential, what I learned to work on trade school was VN Commodores and that didn’t include any technology training now we can’t take a door handle out of a car without having to plug into a computer. We get apprentices or fully qualified technicians who show up to work in our stores with no knowledge on how to handle EVs and given the demand it’s becoming more and more necessary, and currently, businesses are fronting the cost. Having a push from the wider industry to keep up with technology is a change I think we will/need to see, it really has to come from within.

Insurers have also been slow to adapt to an EV environment. They are understaffed and don’t have the time to be sending accessors to training, so they get a bit confused when they see any EV-specific claims which can lead to approval delays which isn’t ideal for the customer.

When we were renovating this shop (Sheen Tullamarine) the intention was for it to be a dedicated EV shop for the group, we’ve been drastically delayed but that is still the plan.

There’s so many options on the market these days consumers have a proper choice. We see a lot of Hyundai and Kias but the Chinese manufactured cars are starting to become more common (GWM, BYD, etc.).

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