Part Three of a Series on Crash Repairs
One of the hot presentations at the International Body Shop Symposium I attended in Montreux, Switzerland earlier this year was “The Future is Lightweight.” To me, it brought into focus the topic I’ve been focusing on in my last two blogs: how much of a challenge body repair shops are facing now and will continue to face at an accelerating pace as the years race toward us.
The speakers noted that, in order to avoid increasingly harsh fines for failing to meet future emissions standards proposed for Europe by 2020 (and, of course, we have our own here in the U.S.A.), auto manufacturers are spending fortunes on research into how to use a variety of exotic lightweight structural materials. These include thinner steel sheet metal, boron-steel alloys, magnesium and magnesium alloys, carbon fiber composites, and aluminum. All are sure to appear in some combination or another, by make and model, in an increasingly large percentage of the autos of the future.
To see what this means for the collision repair industry, consider aluminum, which is a fairly brittle metal. Few body shops are equipped to do aluminum repairs or want to be because it requires a major investment. Apart from the equipment and training required, aluminum repairs can’t be done in the same room where other materials are being repaired, which means there’s a real estate investment to be considered: give up some existing space to devote to aluminum repairs or expand — if that’s even physically possible in an industry dominated by small shops. Either choice has unknown financial consequences, since no shop can accurately estimate how much aluminum repairs they’ll be called on to do.
But aluminum isn’t the only exotic likely to be in the mix. There’s specialized equipment and training required for each different kind. Can you imagine the strain this is going to put on body shop owners? And this challenge comes in an industry where fewer young adults are pursuing a career.
Some shops will embrace all the changes, some won’t and will fall by the wayside, and others may specialize in some of the exotics, but not all. Worse, some will try to make repairs the old way, and there will be poorly repaired, unsafe vehicles getting back on the road.
Whatever the case, from my perspective, the lightweight automobile of the future will have one inevitable consequence: higher prices for repair services. Let’s hope that the biggest consequence isn’t a growing number of poorly repaired vehicles failing catastrophically on our roadways.