Owner of one of UK’s first EVA-approved garages urges independents to plan ahead

Ferris Garage, Cornwall’s electric and hybrid specialist has become one of the first EVA-approved independent garages in the UK.

Owner Tim Ferris, the third generation of his family to own the business established nearly 70 years ago, says the endorsement is a testament to the garage’s ethos of always thinking ahead.

He said: “Even though we’re what you might call a ‘traditional’ garage, I’ve always planned ahead. To survive and thrive, garages need to be able to respond to market changes and anticipate long-term solutions.

“Demand for EV servicing and repair will only increase now. We have lots of customers who have both an EV and an ICE vehicle in the family, and they expect us to be able to look after both of them.

“I saw it coming a long time ago so we geared up and now we’re ahead of our competitors.

“It was exactly the same when we appointed Garage Services Online to do our website nearly 14 years ago. At the time, websites were still quite new and a lot of people saw them as a kind of digital brochure. Again, we went one step further, did it properly and have literally reaped the rewards ever since.”

Ferris Garage receives around 20 enquiries a week via its website and is often confused with a main dealer, something Tim finds both amusing and flattering.

He continued: “Our website is so effective that it frequently appears above main dealers on the search results. The amount of work we get from it is quite incredible. We can pick and choose and better plan our jobs.

“We’re in the middle of nowhere in Truro but people still travel to us from Penzance, St Austell and Newquay. That’s the power of a great website.

“It feeds our business and without it, we just wouldn’t have been able to invest in future technology like we have.”

Jim Lang, managing director at Garage Services Online said: “Having worked with Tim for so long, we’ve seen how he’s taken what was an already busy business, and made it work even more profitably.

“The website brings them a new customer every day and people travel a long way to Ferris Garage. That’s set to continue as news of its EVA accreditation grows online.”

EVA (Electric Vehicle Approved) is an endorsement by the Government Office for Zero Emission Vehicles and the Energy Saving Trust.