Ed Roberts, fixed ops director at Bozard Ford-Lincoln in St. Augustine, Fla., has been thinking a lot lately about how Ford's first three battery-electric vehicles — the Mustang Mach-E arriving this month, the E-Transit van coming late next year and the battery-powered F-150 planned for 2022 — will start to upend his store's fixed operations business model.
Roberts expects visits to his service department by owners of those battery-electric vehicles and the ones that come after will drop by 50 percent over those customers who drive traditional gasoline- or diesel-engine vehicles. Not only that, but the dollar per repair order for EVs also is going to plunge.
A recent study by consulting firm McKinsey & Co. estimates repair tickets for BEVs will shrink between 40 and 50 percent. Some of the reasons for the lower revenue per ticket include: BEV brake pads could last 100,000 miles or more; BEVs don't require oil changes; and over-the-air software upgrades will keep customers out of the service lane.