THE PRAIRIES ARE READY FOR EV POWER
BY ALLISON ROGERS
Each stop on the Collision Repair magazine EV Repair Tour is catered to the market we’re hosting in. We note that electric vehicle adoption is vastly different across Canada; the experiences of a repair shop in Vancouver, B.C., will be starkly different than those in rural Saskatchewan. As such, we are altering our presentations and speakers at each stop to accurately represent electric vehicle collision repair in each locale.
If you ask the average Saskatchewan driver how they feel about EVs, the results will vary greatly. There remains ample concern about the performance of EV batteries in the dead-cold Saskatchewan winters. Plus, like so many other Canadians, Saskatchewanians love their trucks. And there remains much to be desired on the electric pickup front, according to most fans of the model.
Regardless, electric vehicles do exist in the prairies—Ryan Mandell of Mitchell International told crowds at the Saskatchewan Association of Automotive Repairers’ Fall event that he anticipates the Saskatchewan market will soon see 100 EV claims per quarter. Today, in fact, ten percent of Kavia Auto Body’s claims are Teslas. As the only Tesla-certified facility in Saskatoon, general manager Kim Kos and her team see a lot of Teslas. They’ve been certified since 2019 and, as of September 8, they’d never written a Tesla off. And the average claim is $30,000, Kos told crowds at the EV Repair Tour Saskatoon.
Scott Kucharyshen of Saskatchewan Polytechnic also spoke at the Saskatoon event, where he delved into his electric dreams for the vocational college. Kucharyshen has always been one to keep the school ahead of the curve—they currently offer the lucrative BETAG Outer Panel Repair Specialist course—and has hopes to one day achieve Tesla certification for the college’s collision repair shop. The electric OEM is resistant to a training partnership so far, but Kucharyshen is eager as ever to provide the collision repair technicians of tomorrow an opportunity to repair EVs.
Shopowners, managers, technicians and other industry partners were enlightened by the insights delivered by Kos and Kucharyshen during our EV Repair Tour stop in Saskatoon, held in partnership with Fix Network and generously hosted in part with the SAAR Fall Conference. Check out www.evrepairmag.com for more updates on future tour stops.
