Policy and public affairs lead at the IMI, Hayley Pells appeared on the PMM Podcast recently to discuss the future of the MOT. We only had time to share a short section of our chat, so we thought we’d share some more of her great insights here, particularly surrounding emissions and the potential for EV-only test centres in the future.
How will the MOT change in the future? It’s speculatory at this stage, but I think the smart money will be on emissions testing. So we’re looking at existing internal combustion engines and which ones will still be deemed appropriate for our roads and be able to be used safely. We’d also be looking at whether all test centres test all powertrains? So, for instance, would an electric vehicle-only test station come into existence and what would that mean? This could mean a number of things: you’ve got motorists who don’t want to engage with internal combustion engines and would welcome being able to go to an EV-only environment for the maintenance and repair of their vehicle; and you’ve got technicians who only want to work on electric vehicles. This gives us an important choice for our skilled professionals working within that sphere about what kind of air quality they want to breathe in.
Working conditions
Not everybody wants to work in an environment with an internal combustion engine and this could be an important aspect of that choice. You’ve also got areas where there is the geographical influence of what the car parc looks like. If you’re working in the middle of an ultralow emission zone and you’re mostly dealing direct to consumer, you may not be seeing that many commercial vehicles or internal combustion engines at all. So why should your business be expected, owing to regulatory burden, to make sure that you’ve got diesel smoke meters and exhaust gas analysers, which also need to then have calibration – some as soon as six months each? You’re never actually testing those vehicles. It just looks like an extraordinary waste of money through unnecessary compliance. Then you’ve got the other aspect that if you’re only maintaining this equipment owing to that regulatory need, if you then do get suddenly presented with an internal combustion engine, are you actually truly competent on something that you’ve only ever seen for assessment purposes?
Quality control
This all brings into question the whole point of standardisation. Is this standard of test going to be the same from somebody who hasn’t seen a diesel vehicle since they were in training in comparison to somebody who sees it day to day. In order for it to be a standard, it’s got to be the same everywhere. So the EV-only test station could be something that we could see as an elective. Now that might have an impact on some of the aftermarket businesses that we’re seeing emerging with EV-only businesses becoming more interesting to more people. But also we’ve got manufacturers that are EV-only that currently don’t offer test lanes because once you become an MOT station, you have to test everything. So you have EV-only manufacturers that do not want to take internal combustion engine vehicles into their premises.
