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no decline until the 2030s. For a business, it is a really long-term play. That could change, via subsidies and how governments choose to encourage people to go into pure electric vehicles. However, all our statistics show vehicles in operation point towards combustion engine vehicles being pretty safe. To service all the other things, to service anything on a pure battery electric vehicle, you need to train." Keeping the lines of communication open to between Delphi Technologies and garages is vital said Alex: "It is very important for us to be able to talk to technicians. We are doing that more and more. We have got our own channels to do that. We also collaborate with our distribution partners to be able to help them to give training materials and training programmes to technicians. Eventually it expands the size of the market for us all. Through different products and market lines we have got five or six different installer portals where we give them different types of information on diagnostics, on some of our test equipment, and other loyalty programmes. We are looking at ways we can consolidate that, and make it more powerful and meaningful for the installer. Maybe that will be through a specialist repair network with certain levels of training and education, and equipment and tooling partners." Alex concluded: "The aftermarket is innovative and resourceful, and it has been forever. It always manages to find its way through to solutions." DECEMBER/JANUARY 2020 AFTERMARKET 47 www.aftermarketonline.net you can also say that by 2030, only about 10% of the entire world's production of vehicles will be fully electrified. That means all the rest will have a hybrid engine. This means two engines basically, a petrol or diesel engine and the electric engine, which might need to boost the other one. The aftermarket should increase because of that. With the hybrid you need to turn things off and on, it is a much more complex system with all the sensors and the electronic systems talking with each other, and you've got to work with a partner that is able to help you navigate through that to know what's coming." Future It helps if you have a crystal ball, and it turns out Delphi Technologies has one, of a kind: "Through our original equipment sales, Delphi Technologies can kind of predict the future. Our bookings for the next six years with OE companies is about 80% done. What they want to buy from us over the next few years is arranged already. Whether it is diesel or GDI or a combination of that with hybrid, or fully electric vehicles, we know for the next half decade what will be built, and thus we know what impact that will have on the aftermarket. "To simplify the message, what garages need to do is realise that there is a long future in doing what they are doing, in servicing combustion engine vehicles. That is going to go right out until the 2030s. Even the light duty diesel that people are saying is dead because of Dieselgate and all that, in the aftermarket you won't reach peak diesel until about 2023. On average in Europe there is still a growing diesel population. “The second thing is they need to prepare for the future. They need to cut out nonsense like not wanting to touch EVs and hybrids, and instead doing the normal things you would do. They think it is something beyond what they can repair. A lot of it isn't, but some of it is. If garages want to take advantage of that opportunity, they also need to gear up towards it with training, so they can at least get onto phase one of being able to repair a control arm or the brakes or anything like that." Long-term play Looking at how the aftermarket might look in a few years, Alex mused: "All our statistics show that if you look at the vehicles in operation that have got combustion engines, there will be NEXT ISSUE: We send the Editor to take the Delphi Technologies EV and hybrid course