SHOPSMART AUTOS – CUSTOMER INFORMATION – DECEMBER 1, 2021- 1
Who’ll Fix Your Electric Car?
It was the 1960s in Southern California — the epicenter of car culture in America — when a 13-year-old Pat Cadam started tinkering under the hood. Two decades later, what once had been a hobby became a career path when Cadam opened up a small-scale car repair business. It was around the same time that computers started becoming more widely used in cars in the electronic control module, which monitors the sensors in a car to ensure it’s running efficiently. Cadam called it a “watershed moment,” mechanics either realized that learning how to work on computerized systems was essential to staying in the industry, or they were relegated to the status of “backyard mechanic” by continuing to view cars as mechanical devices. By the late ’90s, the industry began talking about the modern hybrid vehicle — a marriage between an electric motor and gas-powered engine —following the passage of the 1990 Clean Act Amendments and 1992 Energy Policy Act, which enacted tighter emissions restrictions and aimed to decrease the United States’ dependence on oil. And in 1997, Toyota began mass producing the first hybrid car: the Prius. As more hybrids came on the market, Cadam wanted to learn everything he possibly could about them. With manufacturers remaining tight-lipped about new technology, Cadam sought out other experts in the auto industry, bringing them into his garage to hold classes for technicians in the area. But by the mid-aughts, hybrids were no longer considered the car of the future. With millions of dollars flowing from Sand Hill Road venture capital firms, Tesla rolled silently and efficiently onto the scene in 2006 with the promise of producing the first modern electric car. The Tesla Roadster came with a $110,000 price tag, placing it out of reach for most of the driving public. It was around this time that Cadam started focusing his energy on what he thought was the next logical step for cars: plug-in hybrids. “Toyota said they were going to leapfrog from hybrids right into electric cars, and I thought, ‘Nope. That’s too big a technology jump,”’ Cadam says. “Behaviorally, people are going to feel nervous about it. The plug-in hybrid makes perfect sense for so many styles of driving and also for people to get used to the technology and to move forward and have it be acceptable.” It was mechanical engineers like University of California, Davis, Professor Andrew A. Frank and other gear heads who led the way and designed the first plug-in hybrid and conversion kits for hybrid owners to upgrade their cars to plug-ins. Cadam was one of many who was instrumental in making hybrid conversion kits more widespread, selling 6,000 to 7,000 kits until Toyota decided to mass-produce its first plug-in Prius in 2012. Since then, the number of electric cars sold in the United States each year has only continued to grow, with an estimated 761,000 hybrids, plug-in hybrids, and electric vehicles sold in 2020 — an all-time high for the fifth consecutive year, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. Sales in 2021 already are outpacing the year prior, with nearly 300,000 vehicles sold in the first quarter alone. But underneath the hood of a gas-powered car differs from what’s underneath the hood of an electric vehicle. While electric cars have fewer moving pieces and don’t require standard maintenance like oil changes or smog checks, fixing certain parts on an EV requires specialized training. As the industry continues to evolve, at his 26th Street auto shop — aptly named Pat’s Garage — Cadam and his technicians have stayed abreast with technology. It’s been a natural progression for those who keep up to date, he says. But “if you’re coming into it cold without any information, then it’s a big learning curve.” Despite San Francisco having one of the largest concentrations of electric vehicles in the country, some of the city’s auto shops remain focused on fixing gas-powered cars. While some say those who haven’t kept up with technology could get swallowed up as more drivers buy electric vehicles, others point out these types of cars still have routine fixes on universal car parts such as brakes, suspension, and tires. In 2007, as hybrid cars continued to grow in popularity, Carolyn Coquillette rushed to open her eco-friendly auto shop, Luscious Garage, in SoMa. She says she was terrified someone was going to “beat [her] to the punch” in setting up a hybrid repair business that was just as green as the cars it fixed. “That was 14 years ago, and no one’s done shit,” she remarks. “I’m pretty disappointed by the industry. I don’t know that anyone has really thought about meeting people in the middle on an environmental basis.”
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