At first glance, it is a classic garage, located in an industrial area of Carquefou, near Nantes. But the dozens of cars dropped off here since Revolte opened a few weeks ago all have one thing in common. “These are electric or hybrid vehicles that are on average more than five years old, reports Alexis Marcadet, 35, one of the eight co-founders of this new kind of garage. Cars that are no longer under warranty but have breakdowns that prevent them from driving. Our objective is to fight against planned obsolescence in the automobile, by identifying and replacing the component in question, and not the whole part as the manufacturers usually offer. »
Inside this vast 1,300 m² workshop, the first in France entirely devoted to electric vehicles, Peugeot iOn, Citroën C-Zero or Renault Zoé, suffering or even at the end of their race, are waiting to pass into the hands of these “e -mechanics”. Equipped with gloves and a large protective visor, in a confined space, Jérémie Noirot takes care of a Kangoo whose battery he has just opened, which is the cause of a third of the breakdowns handled for the moment. here.
“You can spot a grilled component with the naked eye, but the operation is sometimes longer and more complex if you want to get to the bottom of things,” he explains. Last week, a customer arrived with an estimate of 7,000 euros to replace the engine block of his Twizy, when the problem actually came from a faulty resistor in the battery! “A more “fine” diagnosis which would also be more economical for the customer, for around a hundred euros per hour.
Looking for new recruits
Imagined during confinement, Revolt (whose slogan is that a car “must last 100 years”) was born from the observation that “few garages today have the authorization and training” to take charge of these electric cars, which require less maintenance and are considered more reliable than thermals. But rather than the oldest of them (whose value is often less than the amount requested for the repair) end up scrapped or transformed into trade-in offers, its founders have bet on making them last the longest. possible by first opening a first prototype garage in Rennes. An experiment thanks to which they “developed their own tools and knowledge” and were able to see that “customers are demanding and trust”, even if the processing time for a vehicle often exceeds a week.
With “a hundred customers waiting” and sales of electric cars that have exceeded for the first time in September those of diesel, the Nantes garage now aims to very quickly expand its team, made up of around fifteen people. “We are going to recruit between ten and thirty mechanics by the end of 2023 and we will train them ourselves, internally, specifies Alexis Marcadet. We are looking for all types of profiles, including self-taught people, who have an appetite for electricity, electronics, mechanics and want to work in a garage that looks like an R & D laboratory! »