As a lover of technology, perhaps you too, I think I can surely relate with those who find revolutionary Google Glass applications. Such technology is a long time coming and much like 3-D printing it will change everything. Having been in the automotive sector prior to retirement (Franchisor of mobile car wash businesses) my mind usually looks at all new technology for possible automotive applications. Okay so, let’s see how this new innovation will be taken to a whole new level – let’s talk.

There was an interesting article in MIT Technology Review Blog on September 17, 2013 titled; “Google Glass as a Hands-Free Instruction Manual – A new app for Google’s head-mounted computer helps beginners with car maintenance,” by Tom Simonite which got me thinking about a once promising technology someone had come up with ten years ago, but which to date has not been implemented. The article stated; “Augmented reality company Metaio just released video of an idea that seems to make more use of the form of Google Glass.”

The article accompanied a YouTube video titled; “Metaio to Unveil First Hands-Free Car Manual on Google Glass,” by a company that has such an application ready for action.

Yes, this might be even better than the concept MIT was working on for Boeing with holographic displays alongside equipment being worked on – which would be an extension of their now decade old tablet display units. The Google Glass takes it all to a new level, better than anything or better than anyone could imagine. Essentially, you could work in a duality – blending the real world with the virtual one – immersed in instructions from an augmented 3-D image overlaying your work station or work. That is essentially what we are talking about here.

Think about seeing the object you are working on in 4-D, that is to say you’d be able to see inside the engine or motor you are working on, into the interior components, all they while you are working on the outside components removing shrouds, covers, and parts. Imagine working on a piece of infrastructure or jet engine and your Google Glass was hooked up to sensors, allowing you to see the problem in the interior as you are working. All live, all connected, and all-knowing – cool right – I know!

Think what this will do for car racing, prototype building, or the local dealership fixing, maintaining or updated your electric Tesla sports sedan. Yes, awesome. Please consider all this and think on it.

In the automotive employment market there are still very attractive job opportunities available all over the world. So if you are in the automotive employment market and want to make a change there are still a lot of opportunities all over the world.

In this modern world there do exist a massive shortage highly skilled automotive technicians all over the world. So if you are a highly skilled auto technician you can choose where you want to work in the world.

By just applying on one of the many automotive recruitment companies web pages, and they will search a job opportunity for you any place in the world. The fact is that a lot of emerging automotive markets have opened up in reasoned years, due to the power shift in the automotive industry.

This automotive employment market is going to become even bigger in the future as all new type of cars is going to hit the market. Like all the “EV” cars that are still in the prototype phase. All these cars will have new technology implemented into them, so new personnel must be trained to work on them in the future.

This will bring a paradigm shift into this automotive employment market, even the training methods and the skill sets that must be trained have to change in the very near future.

This will cause the manufacturers to start running extensive training and develop programs, to have highly skilled technicians to assist them to establish their brand. There will be coming new brands and brand name into the playing field and these brands will need to still build their names in the market place.

To build a brand name you need a powerful after sales service you can assist your customers with. This alone will create a new automotive employment market to the auto industry; just imagine an electronic or chemical engineer working at your local car dealership.

It may sound farfetched but it is possible as the cars in the future will be driven with power plants like fuel cells, hydrogen emission and electric motors. All of this is going to come to the market place in this modern world sooner than most of us do realize. So the predictions are that a big portion of the existing automotive workforce will leave.

They will leave this workforce as they are from the old school with old school principles that will become extinct with this new technology. The human tendencies are that you will stay ignorant if you become a member of the old school club. This only happens as the older people were conditioned that they can only learn something up to a certain age. All of us know this is not true but the system wants them to leave as it is harder to change and old horse to get rid of his or her habits

The system was created to develop a group of slaves that would be easier to condition, into what this slave system needs and not what the workers needs. That is one of the reasons why the older leading hands in the automotive employment market gets removed or retrenched. The general modern business conceptions are that older people are resisters to modern business, as they don’t want to change.

If all this highly skilled people are removed in the future the whole automotive industry will suffer a massive skills and brain lost that could have passed on to the younger people. Findings are that most of this older people in the automotive industry don’t want to share their knowledge and skills anymore, because they don’t see themselves as resistors for future development in the automotive industry.

So the automotive employment market will suffer great losses in the near future, due to this phenomenon.

Rocco van Rooyen is an Author on Automotive Solutions. As an Entrepreneur and Author on the subject, he is at the forefront to provide solutions to all automotive related problems.

Washing cars at home with soapy water of detergents is a thing of the past. The practice of self cleaning of cars was quite time consuming and never gave the expected results. Being the 21st century the automotive franchise sector has also grown tremendously offering new services and leisure. The increasing number of automotive franchises is leading to emergence of lot of car wash brands in the segment. Car-care service centres not only wash the cars but also maintain them.

Automotive franchise: Unorganised to organised

No doubt car wash segment is still dominated by unorganised brands, but the industry is gradually moving from unorganised to organised segment. Gauging the rise in the sector lsome of the players have taken the franchise route. Anckur Sama, Founder and Director of CarzSpa said, “We entered into this industry four years back with one outlet, but today, we have around 25 outlets across India. The idea of switching over to car beauty clinic hit me from one of my foreign visits where I saw such centres flourishing. I liked the concept of grooming cars to perfection. Hence my profession of selling cars coupled with a passion of grooming cars brought me into this business.”

Need of car care centres

Increasing awareness regarding maintaining cars is the first and foremost reason for the popularity of car care centres. Earlier car owners used to get their vehicles cleaned from local car cleaners, as they had no other option, however now with the availability of car care centres people prefer to get their cars cleaned professionally. Various other factors contributing to the increasing popularity of car care centres are:

Increased car owners: With cars becoming purchasable for the middle class, there has been a rapid increase in the number of car-owners. Clients who have spent over Rs two lakh to two crore for a car do not want to spoil it by washing it at home. This had lead to the popularity of organised car centres.

Increase in disposable incomes: With increase in disposable incomes, people do not mind spending a few extra bucks on the care and maintenance of their cars.

Hectic work schedule: Cleaning a car is a long and a tiring work. Usually people do not have the time or enthusiasm to wash cars due to lack of time. The best substitute for them is the car-wash centre.

Proper maintenance: Organised car care centres not only wash and clean cars but also maintain them perfectly. They do a complete check-up of cars, which make them worth-while for each penny that a customer pays.

Why franchising of car- care centres?

Car-care has emerged as a popular business concept due to its need in the Indian market. Smart entrepreneurs who had seen the vast potential in this business had started small but later on took the franchise route. The reason for expansion through franchising is the well-established brand name. Clients always prefer to send their cars for cleaning to a well-established and reputed centre rather than an unorganised washing unit. Sama shared, ‘Franchising has always been the preferred route for business development. It becomes very difficult for one company to handle the entire business across the country hence we require entrepreneurs to run the show in different cities and locations for further development and success.”

Moreover this sector does not require huge investment for its set up. However, keeping expensive machines and a large workforce would increase the budget.

Players in this field

This is a growing segment with not many players but the car-care business shows great potential for future. The main players in this segment till now are CarzSpa, Express Car wash, Speed Car Wash, Pureshield Car Glass Sealant and 3M Car care. All these payers are successfully expanding via the franchise route.

Challenges for success

The car-care franchise may have many benefits but also has a few drawbacks.

Firstly many aspirants enter the arena with big dreams of making fast cash. Like any other business, there is a lot of hard work in car washing business. Aspirants take a franchise believing that there are machines to do work and staff to manage it. However it should be kept in mind that even the owner (franchisee) has to struggle. As said by Sama, “To create sufficient footfalls and business in initial months is a challenge for an automotive franchise. We can overcome these challenges with low budget marketing advertisement and good services so that the customers become our permanent clients.”

Secondly, the competition from the unorganised players is another challenge that can be dealt with by providing excellent services and showing professionalism.

To conclude, it would not be inappropriate to say that current trends certainly favour the automotive franchise business. People are spending huge amount on expensive vehicles, and are ready to spent few extra bucks in keeping their cars in a excellent condition and the preferred choice would always be a branded car-wash centre. There is definitely a large potential for aspiring entrepreneurs as, ‘No matter what happens, it is likely that as long as there are cars, there will always be a need for car wash’.