TecTalk - Automotive Aftermarket Podcast · Christian Müller - VP Marketing at TecAlliance

#04 with Dirk Fuchs, Director of Programs & Services at I-CAR

·36 min·2 clips

Dirk says 3,000 electric vehicles may have been flooded in Hurricane Ian’s Florida floodline.

Dirk Fuchs joins Tech Talk Aftermarket Podcast to talk through the collision and repair industry from the training side. He starts with the pressure on shops to rethink how they work. In many places, he says, collision shops do not even have the space to handle every repair job on their own. That pushes more work to outside vendors. He treats that as a business problem, not just an operational detail. The show keeps circling back to the same point: the model has to change if shops want to survive. ICAR sits inside that change. Dirk lays out how the organization supports technicians through education and certification. ADAS and EV technology are a major part of that work. Welding training is another. He describes facilities in Wisconsin and Atlanta where Jaguar Land Rover network technicians are trained to weld on aluminum and steel. That class runs for five intense days. He also explains that manufacturers are asking ICAR to train large numbers of EV technicians. The demand keeps growing. Instructor supply is the harder problem. Dirk says the industry needs strong instructors, but the technician shortage affects that pipeline too. He notes that this is true in Germany and in the United States. To respond, ICAR is starting an initiative that borrows from apprenticeship-style education while still working through colleges. The curriculum is being refreshed to feel more current and more appealing to younger people. The goal is to make the path into repair feel real early. Dirk frames that as a way to start education from point zero and prepare people to enter the industry certified and ready. The episode also looks at the U.S. collision market itself. Dirk points to multiple shop operators as the big players in the country. He names large networks with thousands of shops. Those organizations set a lot of the pace. Europe looks different. Independent garages still carry much more of the repair load there. The result is a different market structure and a different kind of shop decision-making. Across the conversation, the show keeps pulling technical details back to practical consequences. Who can weld. Who can train. Who can keep the work in-house. Who can adapt the business model fast enough. The episode closes on a blunt note. If shops want to stay relevant, they need the right space, the right skills, and the right investment decisions now. The future of repair is already moving toward EV and ADAS capability. This conversation shows why that matters before the market decides for them.

As heard by us

A grounded look at collision repair shifting toward EV and ADAS capability.

Dirk Fuchs frames collision repair as a business under strain, where training, certification, ADAS, EVs, welding, staffing, and the limits of keeping more work in-house all start to collide.

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Why you'd press play

Learn why collision shops may need to rethink their business model, not just their workflow.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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