Auto Retail Network (www.auto-retail.com) published a feature by Trend Tracker's Toby Procter in the January 2011 issue of Auto Retail Bulletin, on the likely impacts of EVs on franchised dealers charged with selling and fixing them. You can see the article here, with the publisher's kind permission.

We believe the standard dealership business model is ill-adapted to profit from electric powertrain technology - but that the risk of EVs eroding aftersales absorption is still too distant to displace other concerns. Such as the evidence that manufacturers are already having to extend warranties to recapture lost aftersales business for their networks.

Toby Procter

Trend Tracker Limited

0870 421 4350

aftermarket report, bodyshop market, car finance, electric vehicles, car servicing, automotive research

Trend Tracker's EVs: Energy, Infrastructure and Mobility in the Real World will be published in January 2011, with chapters on:

• EV technology
• Battery chemistries
• Profiles of X EV manufacturers and Y traction battery manufacturers
• EVs and power generation
• Recharging infrastructure development
• Oil and other critical resource constraints
• Market penetration forecasts
• Fiscal policies
• Business models

This report is based on strategic research and three years of tracking developments in the EV and automotive sectors. No mere technology update, it offers uncomfortable advice based on a mass of technology, energy and resources data. It’s designed to help investors, politicians, environmentalists and senior executives in the automotive and power utility sectors get to grips with the dynamics