News items from the world of fixed operations

AutoNation Inc., the largest U.S. new-vehicle retailer, seeks to add 500 service technicians for its dealership service departments and its growing network of company-branded collision repair centers.

The Fort Lauderdale, Fla., company did not say how many technicians it currently employs. In most AutoNation markets, “every role in the service area” is short of technicians at all levels of experience, said Marc Cannon, the company’s chief marketing officer. “Bottom line, we want to grow service,” he said.

The company is about three years into a $500 million brand extension program that includes its 83 collision centers, standalone used-car stores and AutoNation-branded parts and accessories as well as finance and insurance products.

Adding body shops has created greater demand for service techs, Cannon says. AutoNation opened nine collision centers in 2018 and acquired two more, the company said in its annual report. Cannon says the group plans to continue opening collision centers but declined to specify a growth target.

AutoNation operates 244 dealerships in the U.S. and sold 310,839 new retail vehicles in 2018, according to the Automotive News list of the 150 largest dealership groups in the country.

A General Motors dealership in Ontario was fined $45,000 Canadian ($34,000) after two employees were critically injured when a hoist failed and a vehicle fell to the ground.

The incident occurred Feb. 21, 2017, at Lake Shore Motors, a Buick-GMC-Chevrolet dealership in Kirkland Lake, Ontario. The vehicle was about 6 feet in the air, and the workers were standing underneath making repairs, according to the Ontario Ministry of Labour. The vehicle suddenly fell off the hoist.

The ministry ruled in June 2019 that the dealership “failed to provide information, instruction and supervision on the safe operation and inspection of automotive hoists.” The dealership pleaded guilty.

The ministry found that at least one of the four restraint arms on the hoist had swung out of place, causing the vehicle to slip off the arms and fall. The gears that were supposed to lock the arms in place were not functioning properly, the ministry said, adding that the teeth on the gears were worn, rusted and in poor condition and the metal bars that hold the restraints together were bent.

A ministry engineer concluded that the restraint devices had not functioned properly for an extended period. Pads on the swing arms also were found to be worn and in poor condition. Several other hoists in the workplace were in similarly poor condition, the ministry said.

Tesla Inc. opened 25 service centers in the second quarter of 2019 and plans to accelerate the pace of openings, according to CEO Elon Musk.

Availability of service is more important than retail outlets, Musk said last month during a conference call to discuss the automaker’s quarterly earnings. The electric-vehicle company doesn’t operate franchised dealerships.

Tesla CFO Zachary Kirkhorn said the company is mapping where its customers live and how long they need to drive to get to a service center. Tesla also added 101 mobile service trucks — an 18 percent increase — in the second quarter.

At the service centers, Tesla is storing more frequently used replacement parts so repairs aren’t delayed to wait for parts to arrive from distribution centers. Musk said his aim is to provide not only same-day service, but same-hour service.

Musk said he meets with Tesla’s service team multiple times a week and that regional service heads visited the company’s Fremont, Calif., assembly plant to share feedback with the production and software teams. As Tesla gets better at making vehicles, he suggested, there will be fewer defect-related repairs.

Tesla has started in-sourcing collision repair to speed fixes and improve “customer happiness,” Musk added.

Musk and Jerome Guillen, president of the company’s automotive division, said the No. 1 reason for a service call is to learn how to turn on the Autopilot driver-assist system, which is done with a stalk, not a button.

A new feature from Cox Automotive’s Xtime enables dealership service customers to check the repair status of their vehicles on mobile devices, through a link provided by a text or email. Xtime executives say the feature, called Service Tracker, will reduce demands on service advisers to provide status updates by phone, allowing them to spend more time with customers in the service drive.

Cox says Service Tracker will become generally available this month to U.S. franchised dealerships as an add-on to Xtime’s Inspect product.