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I'm very fond of my local mechanic and take my car to him rather than the dealer shops whenever possible. Thinking back on the repairs I've had him do over the past few years, I don't think it matters much what I have under the hood.

In the future the local mechanic may not be able to fix everything that goes wrong with the car, but the simple bread-and-butter repairs will keep coming. Tires and brake pads will need replacing, new stereos will need installing, body panels will need straightening, power windows will burn out, and so on. An REEV or PHEV will even still need oil changes. Tomorrow's cars will still contain many of the parts today's cars do, even if the drivetrain is different.

The new electrical components that would appear like battery packs, power management systems, and so on, are not going to be very mechanic-serviceable. On the upside, they tend to fail rarely and dramatically so a return to the dealer doesn't seem unreasonable.

The age of dedicated diagnostic hardware has to end soon. Onboard computers should be sophisticated enough by now to talk directly to the manufacturer's server for a diagnosis. Perhaps a battery management system could report its health back to the manufacturer every time you plug it in at home (provided you can get WiFi in your garage or something like that).

As for donuts, I foresee a similar pattern. The standard donut is irreplaceable, but they may be augmented by cyber-donuts, which are easier to eat with greasy hands.

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Of course the local mechanic will remain and likely thrive. Somebody will have to keep all the ½ ton trucks running for our landscapers and cable guys who can’t afford the new hybrid replacements. Nobody throws away a truck; they will continue on and be driven into the ground. Admittedly today’s hybrids will essentially be disposable cars, they will be simply too expensive to repair when the batteries need replacing. Body shops will be the hardest hit as cars become smaller and lighter to meet CAFÉ even minor collisions will impact crumple zones totaling them.

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I've been doing a lot of my own work for 40+ years. My VW beetle is economical, plus parts are still available. The VW parts market is still flourishing.
I'll do exactly what the Cubans do, keep it running.
My mechanic friend can't wait to work on it.

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Cars aren't more difficult to work on today, car companies just have you believing it. Take BMW. They go well out of their way to making you believe your car needs a trip to the dealer just to open the hood. Their dirty little secret is that BMW's are one of the easiest cars to work on yourself. It makes for FAT service margins.

For crying out loud, if you've got high-school dropouts bolting the cars together in the first place, how bloody hard can it be to fix them?

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Some new vehicles like the Prius are more complex, others like the Tesla are really much simpler.

All of them are more technologically advanced, and require special skills to anything. Even a simple tire replacement: new cars have air pressure sensors that will get broken if you don't know what you're doing, and may cost you hundreds of dollars to replace.

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There is no such thing as an "auto mechanic". You now have "Auto Technicians". This is the simple reason that independent shops are doomed. You don't have "medicine men" any more either.

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Nah, independent mechanics will still be around. For one, electronics are becoming a more and more important part of cars, true, but there are plenty of other things to fix. Secondly, I think we'll be starting to see more people of the basement-dweller computer geek type working in garages. If you think about it, they aren't really that different from your classic dedicated mechanic car-nut, both have a sort of do-it yourself attidude. This is also why I think the thing about only dealerships being able to fix electronics-related issues because only they can afford all the expensive diagnostic equipment is bullshit. Why? Open Source, and networking. You have people all over the globe developing new software, cracking codes and figuring out communication protocols, for free, in their spare time, without commercial interest, simply because they like solving problems and they *can*. And once they figure it out, the knowledge spreads. It already started, right now you can download open-source ECU codes, or diagnostic programs that talk to your car.
Even things like battery swaps or power system modifications in EVs and Hybrids will ultimately not be limited to manufacturer or dealer-only service. People will be upgrading their cars the same way they upgrade and mod PCs now. Actually, people have been doing it all along XD

Oh and don't worry about hydrogen. It won't be relevant to mass-market cars for a long time, dare I say: never.

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In defense of the dealer's repair shop...in college I worked part time at a Chrysler-Plymouth dealer doing new car set up and minor repair. Unlike the local repair shop, the dealer sees his brand almost exclusively. Each model has it's quirks and issues and they soon become common knowledge within the shop. So they know that the electronic windshield wiper motor speed controller gasket fails after a few years and the wiper becomes erratic. The dealer mechanic can go to the problem immediately because he's seen it a dozen time before where as the local shop may never experienced the problem and has to diagnose it. We also had a means of feeding back to the manufacturer the problems we were seeing in the field so future models resolved them; local guy can't do that.

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Good comment, Whopper. That's been my experience. I've rarely come away from a dealer repair to find that what was wrong wasn't what got fixed.

I think the need for mechanics for EVs will be about the same as for gasoline powered vehicles for everything except the art of engine repair, which will disappear - electric motors are an order or two simpler than ICEs - and working with batteries/controllers, which will introduce another system to be diagnosed and repaired. And battery systems won't seem like some incredibly complex and new technological principle. It's still fundamentally stuff we learned in shop class, isn't it?

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Remember how fuel injection was going to kill the independent garage? Didn't happen.

No, you can't easily repair the hybrid drive on a Prius. You can't easily repair a lot of in-car electronic systems. Heck, you can't easily repair an automatic transmission (trust me, after several fishing expeditions to address a slipping AT, it's easier to just replace the damn thing). The days of a mechanic refurbishing a carb or throttle in-house disappeared a long time ago.

What will happen is you'll see a lot more whole-system replacements, instead of repairs. In a Prius, this could mean a wholesale swap of either motor/generator, which really isn't a lot different than a swap of an alternator or starter except in scale.

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Some of us-particularly those of us who had hoped to work as mechanics someday-have been thinking about this for about 30 years. Pretty typical of our "O Gosh" new world that it dawns on us after we sign the social contract that we might be re-arranging things in a big way.

It's all about dweebs vs. greasers. Our new feminized overlords think cars are icky, and the people who fix them are scary. They can't breed them out of existence fast enough. Genocide.

Cowboy Bob, there are more "medicine men" now than there ever were. It's "alternative medicine" now: less acculturated, more expensive. You may social-engineer a world without mechanics, but you'll never live in a world that doesn't need them. I look forward with glee to your unintended consequences.

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psarhijnian, "component replacers" are just those folks we used to hold in disdain. They were the ones who replaced one thing after another until the symptom went away. A true tech will locate the problem and fix it.

Regarding your automatic trans...one of the most common problems and the toughest to diagnose and cure is porosity in the aluminum casting. After a bit of wear within the hydraulic circuitry a pore opens up and bleeds fluid off where it doesn't belong. Erratic shifting, slipping or failure to shift usually results. That's why most aftermarket transmission shops buy factory rebuilt tranmissions instead of trying to fix them in their shop.

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Comatus, I think it's more a case of the Poison Gas that comes out of car exhaust pipes, and how that Poison Gas and Carcinogenic Particulate Pollution negatively affects the health (and therefore the productivity and wealth) of the population.

I think we're going to see a lot of cross-over between the geek-hacker and the wrench monkey. Geeks will realize they can reclaim their Lost Masculinity by working on cars, and wrench monkeys their Lost Intellect by learning electronics.

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If we had only hybrids to look forward to I might believe that local garages would struggle. But ultimately the ICE will drop out of the picture. When that happens the drive train becomes so simple that most anyone can work on it (just don't stand in a puddle of water while you do it.)

The only problem the garages will face will be less business due to reliability.

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You're missing the core issue. The parallel hybrids are not going to be around long term. Serial hybrids and all electrics are where we are headed, and sheer reliability is the core issue. Moving parts count is going to fall through the floor, and there is a direct relationship between reliable and parts count. Cars won't need to be worked on because there will be much fewer moving parts. They will also get a lot cheaper for the same reason. Cheap to build, cheap to run, almost never break, and last forever. Won't be many car companies, dealers, or independent garages.

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End of local mechanics? No way. Boon more likely. My husband and I both own Zap electric cars, mine's the sedan, his is the pk. I can honestly say, with the exception of a couple weeks, if one is not in the shop, the other is, all year. I assume (or hope?) the kinks will eventually be worked out, but till then, complete job security is in the foreseeable future.

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They said the same thing when electronic ignitions came out, and emissions controls, and fuel injection, and computers, and airbags, and abs and on and on. Nothing really changed, biggest change was the shops had to buy a scanner, though some still try to get buy without one. The cars will be worked on for the first few years by dealer techs, they will learn the quirks and tricks first and then they will filter out to the local shops same sa allways. Some rare but special shops will really learn the new cars and invest in the new technology and they will thrive. Most will keep changing oils, shocks, brakes, and struggle when anything harder comes along until they give up (after charging the customer hundreds or even thousands) and then it will go to the dealership where it will be fixed if the customer has any money left. Those shops wont thrive, but they will struggle on as always and keep bringing the business down as always. The dealership will still be the same, you will have a few guys that will actually learn them, and the rest of the parts hangers will be asking them "How do I do this?" as always. Tech pay wont go up much, taxes will, the cost of tools will skyrocket(again), and the labor rate will go up. That is why there will always be outside shops, even if they cant do it right, they can certainly do it cheaper and there is always a market for that.

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Texmln - I happen to be an auto mechanic and I have news for you. Car companies do make it seem harder to work on the vehicles but that is because it is. Electronics have developed so quickly that even the young technicians who are used to working with computers and other electronics have problems understanding. I know this because I am one of these young techs trying to work on overdeveloped vehicles. As far as techs losing their jobs due to green vehicles? I doubt this will happen. With advances in technology, come more devices to monitor events in the vehicle. Sure you won't have pistons going up and down inside an engine - parts eliminated, but now instead of those aluminum and steel parts, you will have huge battery packs with sensors to possibly monitor acid levels, charge levels, temperature, battery conditions. That will most likely be just to monitor the battery pack itself not to mention the drive line motors and all. So the end of mechanics? I doubt it.

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Blog comments are funny ! I have been a mechanic for 32 years & welcome new technolgy,it keeps us learning & sharp,sorry i do not support doom & gloom.BRING IT ON. we will fix it !

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Interesting and divergent array of ideas and opinions on this subject. It is one that I am intimately associated with since I am a professional technician, have spent most of my life fixing, breaking, learning about, re-engineering, modifying, racing and rescuing machines that eat dead dinosaurs. Except for airplanes, if it sucks, squeezes, bangs and blows I've probably lost a wrench or screwdriver in one at some point. I suppose I could write my own related blog on things of the past, things I've seen change dramatically and revolutionary changes I see approaching in the near future, but I digress. Independents won't go away altogether, but it will be much more challenging for them to stay trained and current on technological changes and upgrades and how much it will cost to buy the technologies to make the repairs and servicing. The guy whose job is really secure is the Snap-On tool supplier. They are gonna make a killing! If any of you are interested in more information or my "observations" of 30 years of wrenching, post your thoughts and I'll do my best to throw out a reply.

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