JUNE 2023 AFTERMARKET 57 www.aftermarketonline.net garage. When my father retired six years ago I was the third generation, and I wanted to make sure the family name continued, so there would be a fourth and a fifth generation. I was looking for a new challenge and saw alternative fuels as the future. I then tried to buy a Nissan Leaf, going to three different dealers, but I knew more about the car than the dealers. I eventually bought the car, learned from that went out to the owners groups and said, ‘I run a garage, I'll look after your car for you’. It all took off from there.” Initially, the electric cars were kept quite separate from the traditional workshop side, and was based on a different site: “We set up Cleevely EV as a separate company to look after EVs specifically. Early adopters were a very different type of customer. They're very tech savvy or environmental savvy or frugal, we found we just had to tailor our business around the customer base.” They also had to tailor their business around the fact that parts availability for EVs can be quite tricky. “In our showroom, we've got parts department dedicated to EVs. We're the only importer of an EV specific range coming from a Danish manufacturer because we were getting Tesla owners coming nationwide to have their car serviced and MOTd here. It is very embarrassing if you hand over a failure sheet and say we haven't got The bits to fix it. That’s why we had to start stocking parts.” This is despite the fact that they have a major factor so close that they share parking spaces: “We've got a GSF Car Parts opposite us, but they don't stock the components. Neither do LKQ Euro Car Parts or most of the others, so we've gone out and we've invested ourselves created the kind of place that needs to exist in order to look after EVs. What we're realising is car maintenance for the future is going to be a different model than we're used to. The customers are going to be slightly different too. Life is about convenience, so we're building a business that fulfils all those needs.” Investment Speaking of needs, we wondered if being a EV specialist has meant they needed to invest in things like special lifts, etc. “We don't have special lifts; These are all standard offthe-shelf lifts. Our baseless two-posters are four and a half and five tonnes. That's not necessarily just because of EVs, but I'd be lying if I said that wasn't reflecting my choice that we made sure that we had the correct capacity. All you can see in here over and above what you would see in an ICE workshop is a battery lifting table and some high voltage tooling. Other than that, we're running with what any other standard workshop would and the investment doesn't need to be ridiculous in order to get into EV. All of my guys are EV-trained, and are aware and knowledgeable. There is nothing dangerous out on show. We've got battery packs in the workshop, we've got motors out in the workshop. These are just ongoing jobs. What I'd really like to get across to the trade is that you don't have to make a drastic change in order to run your workshop for EVs.” Since May 2020, the business has been entirely based on the EV site, with EV servicing and repairs taking place alongside work being performed on internal combustion engine cars. “This was our MOT site, so there's a lot of back and forth between the two garages. I used COVID-19 as a bit of an excuse. So when we shut the two sites during March and April 2020, I never reopened the other site. then had the opportunity to move into the unit behind us and expand, take the unit next door and have it as a sales centre. In all, we have four units on the estate. The fourth is for breaking crash-damaged EV for parts. Repairing EVs is often about getting second hand components.” We saw a Nissan Leaf up on a lift on one side with one tech, and a Vauxhall Corsa being worked on by another of Matt’s team of six on the other side. While they have a few customers running both an EV and an ICE, they are essentially serving two distinct sets of clients, with differing requirements. With many of the Tesla customers coming from across the country, one challenge is balancing the needs of local customers against those who have made a four-hour round-trip to partake of their expertise: “When we're taking a booking, we know what questions to ask in order to know whether we're going to be able to fix it the same day. As ever in the motor industry, it's about managing expectations. If you think that you're not going to be able to do a job within that customer's timeframe, then you have that honest conversation.” Future Looking towards the future, Matt laid out his plans: “More sales, more repairs, doing what we're best at, which is repairing vehicles. It's been five years’ worth of really quick growth, so I'm looking forward to a couple of years of consolidation, improving to be more efficient and better at what we do.” Matt added: “We work very closely with HEVRA, and we do a lot of R&D with Pete Melville and we learn from that. That gets fed back through the network as well. That's what it's about for me; Helping the whole industry. There's plenty of work to go around and there always will be if you are willing to learn, and you are willing to invest in your business.”
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