EV Builder's Guide Headlines SEMA 2022 EV Panel

EV Builder’s Guide Headlines SEMA 2022 EV Panel

Magazine editors, contributors and industry insiders will discuss the global opportunities of electric trucks at SEMA next November.

In the first year of its existence, EV Builder’s Guide will moderate a SEMA 2022 panel: “The Electric Truck: Tap into New Opportunities.“

The panel’s appearance demonstrates the growing EV interest at SEMA but also the magazine’s importance to the larger aftermarket industry. “There was no EV presence there before,” says founding editor Chris Hamilton, “and now we’re hearing, ‘Keep up the good work.'”

With new editor-in-chief Jérôme Andre, the EV Builder’s Guide panel at SEMA 2022 also begins the magazine’s pivot to covering EVs worldwide.

By 2025, a majority of global consumers expect to buy an EV, and so Andre and Hamilton will gladly explain how the magazine is already bringing EV insight to the world of readers who want it.

He has been an auto journalist for over 20 years, but in 2016 Andre turned to the fledgling EV industry he saw in the United Kingdom. “I did my first story about a classic car-EV conversion in the U.K.,” he says. “I could tell that was the way forward because conversions make a classic care more reliable and enjoyable to use.”

He and Hamilton agree that the EVs from the U.K., Europe and Australia will appear in the magazine’s coming issue.

“It’s important to bring international coverage to international readers in Issue 2,” Andre says.

“We cannot just cover stories in America, and so we’ve got pieces from owners modifying their cars around the globe.” Those stories also include India, where Andre hints there is more EV potential than many expect.

Hamilton and Andre will join three other panelists from the EV industry to discuss the future trends of electric trucks for builders, consumers and technicians.

Andre, for one, is already describing a future trend he sees: retrofitting existing internal combustion engine vehicles with electric drivetrains, rather than building all-new EVs.

“Even mainstream European manufacturers are considering it, because it makes more sense for them. They were really against it five years ago and now they’ve embraced it.”

He adds that American manufacturers might not be far away from a similar move: “I wouldn’t be surprised if GM or Ford worked out retrofitted models in the next five years,” he says. But that’s just one item for the future that he’s bringing to the panel.

“The Electric Truck: Tap into New Opportunities” will occur on Nov. 1, 2022, at 11 a.m. in the West Hall of SEMA. Hamilton will moderate a four-person panel that includes Andre, contributor and Legacy EV Design Engineer Tim Cachelin, Electrified Garage CEO Chris Salvo, and Battle Motors Chief Technology Officer Kelleigh Ash