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Tesla is moving forward with plans to build its first company-owned body shop in Ventura County.
The Tesla Collision Center will be built on a nearly 5-acre vacant lot in Camarillo at the corner of Pancho Road and Calle Quetzal. The site is located in an industrial and agricultural area in the southeast of the city.
The Camarillo Planning Commission voted 4-0 in favor of the project on Tuesday.
According to the city administration, the 2,500 square meter building will offer 18 repair stations for the manufacturer’s electric vehicles. The parking lot will have 92 parking spaces.
Construction of the center will take about a year, Tesla representative David Coulter told the commission. The company will continue to operate its Camarillo dealership at 311 E. Daily Drive, he said.
Several body shops in Ventura County are already approved by Tesla for collision repairs, according to the company’s website. The future center in Camarillo would be the first owned and operated by Tesla Motors Inc. The centers cover everything from light collision repairs to complete structural repairs, the website says.
Coulter told commissioners the facility will save local Tesla owners time on the road, as they currently have to drive outside the county to a Tesla-owned collision center. The closest is in Santa Monica.
News of the future center in Camarillo was a pleasant surprise for Chris Johnson, a Woodland Hills attorney who was charging his 2016 Tesla Model S at one of the manufacturer’s Supercharger stations in the parking lot of a Thousand Oaks shopping center on Thursday.
“The more Tesla service centers, the better,” said Johnson, 68, on the promenade in Westlake.
Johnson said he regularly travels to Camarillo, where he keeps his two single-seat ultralight aircraft in a hangar at Camarillo Airport.
In addition to standard body repairs, a Tesla collision center can also handle technical issues such as damaged sensors on the outside of the car, Johnson said.
“The bottom line is, how can anyone not be happy to have service closer to home?” said Johnson, whose Model S is his fourth Tesla vehicle.
The planned center in Camarillo met with no opposition during the planning commission meeting. The only speakers were city employees and representatives from Tesla and Hofman Planning Associates, a Carlsbad-based planning firm that works with the automaker.
The center is expected to provide about 50 full-time jobs, said Paul McClaren, Camarillo’s senior planner, Monday before the commission meeting.
The project is not expected to have a major impact on traffic because the neighborhood’s streets are designed for industry, McClaren said. There are no residential buildings nearby.
The center would be open weekdays and would be able to service 60 to 80 vehicles per week, the city government’s report said. A typical repair could take 11 to 16 days. Facilities include booths for paint jobs.
Coulter, the Tesla representative, said charging stations would not be installed at the accident center because the company believes they are best placed near businesses such as cafes or grocery stores.
Tesla plans to hire as many employees as possible from the Camarillo area, he said.
The manufacturer does not currently have any charging stations in Camarillo, but is reviewing possible locations, commission officials said. Tesla’s website listed a possible location on Ventura Boulevard, east of Arneill Road, in Camarillo’s Old Town.
In addition to Thousand Oaks, there are local Tesla Supercharger stations in Oxnard, Ventura, Simi Valley and Ojai, according to tesla.com/supercharger.
Dave Mason covers East County for the Ventura County Star. He can be reached at [email protected] or 805-437-0232.
