Tools
Tools
The numbers are hard to ignore now. Battery electric vehicles hit 20.6% of new car registrations in the UK in January 2026, and the full year for 2025 topped 23%. That is roughly one in four new cars. Which means one in four cars that eventually needs a service, a repair, or a body fix is going to have a high-voltage system sitting under the floor.
Most independent workshops know this is coming. Fewer are doing much about it.
The conversation tends to get stuck on the big-ticket items: approved manufacturer programmes, EV-specific lifts, dedicated workshop bays. And those things matter if you are going to specialise. But there is a much lower barrier to entry than that, and it starts with the equipment you are probably already replacing anyway.
If you do nothing else, sort your diagnostics. The Autel MaxiSys Ultra EV is the benchmark right now for mixed-fleet workshops. It handles battery pack analysis directly via OBD or specialist cables, reads and clears high-voltage system faults, and its topology mapping gives technicians a live diagram of the electrical architecture rather than a list of codes to scroll through. The 5-in-1 VCMI combines oscilloscope, waveform generator, multimeter and CAN bus checker alongside the standard VCI functions.
That is not cheap kit. But if you are already using Autel for ICE diagnostics, adding EV capability via the EVDiag upgrade kit is a far smaller step than starting from scratch with a different platform.
Body shops have been using induction heating for bolt release and panel work for years. With EVs, the technique gets more important and more carefully applied at the same time.
Battery packs run close to underbody panels. High heat concentration in the wrong place causes real problems. The GYS POWERDUCTION range handles this well: the 10R and 18R units give precise, localised heat with enough control to work safely near sensitive components. The 2025 inductor range adds a much wider variety of shapes for awkward geometries, including ring inductors from 20mm to 200mm diameter, which matters when you are working around battery mounting hardware and structural bolts.
For workshops on the commercial vehicle side, GYS launched the POWERDUCTION 220LG at Nufam 2025: a three-phase 400V unit delivering 22kW for sustained heavy-duty heating cycles on truck chassis and agricultural equipment.
The GYS 1000V insulated tool kit (25 tools, IEC 60900 certified) is purpose-built for high-voltage work, with triple-layer insulation and the testing documentation to prove it. These are not premium versions of standard tools. They are a different category.
Fitting a set to your workshop is a straightforward decision. Not having them when an insurer or fleet operator asks to see your EV servicing capability is a different kind of conversation.
Type 2 to Type 2 charging cables are becoming standard kit for any workshop running a courtesy car fleet or handling collection and delivery. GYS makes them in 5m, 32A configurations for both single-phase (7.4kW) and three-phase (22kW). If your courtesy cars include EVs, or your customers expect some charge back in their car when they collect it, this is a quick win.
The UK Garage and Bodyshop Event at the NEC Birmingham on 3-4 June 2026 has EV servicing as one of its central themes. If you have not registered, it is worth going. Not because of the seminars, though those are useful, but because seeing equipment in person and talking to other workshops about what they have actually adopted tends to produce better buying decisions than any catalogue.
We will cover what we see at the show. If you want to know what is worth looking at before you go, get in touch.