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The Murray Auto Group has overseen a lot of technological changes since its founding nearly a century ago and is on the cusp of witnessing another major industry shift due to the recent proliferation of electric vehicles.

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The Murray Auto Group has overseen a lot of technological changes since its founding nearly a century ago and is on the cusp of witnessing another major industry shift due to the recent proliferation of electric vehicles.

To usher in this new era, the group’s local dealership at 1500 Richmond Ave. has invested more than $500,000 in infrastructure upgrades to accommodate the future sale and servicing of these EVs, with a major shipment of Cadillac Lyriqs set to arrive later this year.

On Wednesday, executive manager Rich Pentney took the Sun on a tour of this space to highlight how that money was spent, with a large chunk of it earmarked to purchase and install nine charging stations on site.

The heads of Murray Chevrolet Cadillac Buick GMC in Brandon — general sales manager Chuck Elliott, executive manager Rich Pentney and general manager Doug Murray — gather in front of a photo of a Cadillac Lyriq Wednesday morning. The Lyriq will be the first electric vehicle that the dealership will be selling at a high volume. (Kyle Darbyson/The Brandon Sun)

While the company has been conducting similar renovations at its other locations scattered throughout Canada, the dealership in Brandon is one of the first to get these stations up and running, including a 50-kilowatt model that can reportedly generate an 80 per cent charge within 15 minutes.

“The chargers themselves aren’t all that expensive — they’re fairly substantial — but getting the infrastructure and the power to those chargers was a huge project,” Pentney said the day before. “That one took a lot of planning and a lot of work from a local contractor to get that ready.”

Since EVs are heavier, on average, compared to their gas-powered counterparts, Murray Auto Group also had to purchase a 12,000-pound hoist to properly perform maintenance and an 8,000-pound forklift to unload the giant batteries that power these vehicles.

The dealership’s technicians are also being armed with some new tools and additional training to ensure that customers bringing in their EVs for servicing encounter a “frictionless environment” that gets them back on the road as soon as possible.

“We want to be able to service all these vehicles locally and be able to look after our customers,” Pentney said. “Because it’s not just about selling them. It’s about looking after our customers for the long haul.”

Murray Auto Group has been partnered with General Motors since 1934 and currently sells the multinational company’s four core brands (Chevrolet, Buick, GMC and Cadillac) at its 30 locations across Canada.

As a result, Murray Auto Group is largely tethered to whatever new direction General Motors is heading in terms of its business strategy, which is why this $500,000 investment in Brandon was seen as a necessity.

Pentney stands beside a 50-kilowatt charging station that the dealership installed on site within the last 30 days. The Murray Auto Group has spent more than $500,000 to install nine charging stations and other electric vehicle infrastructure at this dealership to better accommodate the future sale and servicing of electric vehicles. (Kyle Darbyson/The Brandon Sun)

“It’s absolutely the way that the industry is going,” Pentney said.

“Our manufacturer, General Motors, is really committed to going almost fully electric by 2035 at the absolute latest. And most of the brands, like Buick and Cadillac, are hoping to be there by 2030.”

To publicly communicate this shift, Murray Auto Group has even organized a showcase of the new Cadillac Lyriq on Monday, when locals will get the opportunity to see the yet-to-be-released vehicle in person and field questions to visiting brand representatives.

The hope is that seeing Cadillac’s first fully electric vehicle up close will help convince skeptical motorists to consider buying an EV in the future, even if the total number of charging station locations in the Westman area is far from ideal.

While 16 such locations can currently be found in Brandon, according to the website PlugShare.com, the rest of the region is fairly scattershot in terms of its EV infrastructure, with large stretches of road between each charging station leading to legitimate concerns about getting stranded.

However, Pentney believes that this situation will improve in the future and that a lot of his customers are willing to better map out their travelling in the meantime.

Murray stands next to a Cadillac charging station sign that is posted next to his office door on Wednesday. Murray is running the company that was originally started by his grandfather in 1926 and is ready to fully adopt a new era of technology through electric vehicles. (Kyle Darbyson/The Brandon Sun)

“It will take a little bit more planning when you are taking a road trip,” he said. “But our customers who are EV enthusiasts … that’s kind of a process for them, and they enjoy doing that. And it’s only going to get better as this infrastructure increases.”

Talking to the Sun inside his office on Wednesday, Murray Auto Group CEO Doug Murray also understands why some motorists are hesitant to adopt this new technology.

And as someone who has been in the industry his whole life, eventually taking over the company that was started by his grandfather in 1926, Doug has seen this same pattern play out in different forms.

“Vehicles went from V8 to six cylinder to four cylinder and even three cylinders,” he told the Sun on Wednesday. “So we’ve seen some big changes and I think this is just another one.”

Pentney also admits that this pivot to EVs will also require a major adjustment from his team in Brandon, since they’ve only sold a handful of Chevrolet Bolts throughout the last couple of years and haven’t dealt with marketing, selling and performing maintenance on these vehicles at a high volume.

And while Murray Auto Group will continue to sell gas-powered vehicles for the foreseeable future, the team in Brandon is ready for the incoming influx of Cadillac Lyriqs, Hummer EVs and Chevrolet Blazer EVs that will grace their showroom floor in the coming months.

“We’re 100 per cent all in to market those vehicles and find homes for them here,” Pentney said. “We believe it is the future and it’s definitely coming.”

The Cadillac Lyriq is General Motors' first fully electric vehicle and is expected to hit the road at a mass-market level by the spring of 2023. (File)

Murray Auto Group’s in-person showcase of the Cadillac Lyriq is taking place on Monday between 10 a.m. and 7 p.m.