Car Dealerships

Your dealership can take several steps to reduce energy waste and promote sustainability.   However, the most important first step is to significantly improve the lighting in the following areas:

1. Showrooms: we have seen 30 – 35 footcandles of light in showrooms.  The average (without ambient light) was 45 footcandles.  The target number is 100 footcandles.  If you want the paint to pop and the leader to look and smell it best you are not getting it done with 40 footcandles of light, it requires 100 footcandles.

2. Service Bays: we have seen an average 25 – 35 footcandles, and here we want a minimum of 50 footcandles, and when working on transmission and motors we again want a lot of light, 100 footcandles.

3. Customer Car Pickup: when your customer is ready to pay and pick up their car it should be freshly washed / cleaned and looking good.  Again here we are requiring 50 footcandles and the light levels here are all over the map.  We have seen as low as 15 footcandles and as high as 45.

4. Proper lighting does more than sell cars, and reduce service technicians’ mistakes, when done properly it should also save the dealership money on their energy bills.

Beyond Lighting in the Car Dealership:

1. HVAC Optimization: Properly designed and calibrated HVAC will save your business a significant amount of money and provide more comfort to your team members and guests.

2. Energy Management Systems: Implement an energy management system that monitors and controls energy usage in real-time.  This can help identify areas of inefficiency and optimize energy consumption.

3. Smart Motors: The number of motors in a dealership adds up quickly, and the new technology that is available today has 5 – 20 HP motors reducing energy consumption by 60% plus over the legacy motors.  Not to mention these new smart motors have the ability to turn themselves off when there is no longer a workload and or occupancy in the areas the motor was servicing.

4. HVAC: There is a lot of wasted AC and heat that go into dealerships into areas of low to no occupancy after 5 pm.  Again new advanced technology monitors occupancy and manages the HVAC, based on this area’s physical occupancy.  This provides another large layer of energy savings.