Interview: SEMA SVP Karen Bailey-Chapman

[00:00:12] Hello everyone and welcome to Kilowatt, a podcast about electric vehicles, renewable energy, autonomous driving and much much more. I think I screwed up the intro but I'm going to keep going, I'm going to keep rolling. On today's episode we have a really fun interview with Karen

[00:00:35] Bailey-Chapman. Karen is the Senior Vice President of Public and Government Affairs at the Specialty Equipment Market Association. You probably know it as CEMA. CEMA is a trade association that represents over 7,000 member companies in the automotive aftermarket industry.

[00:00:57] And just to give you an idea of how big this industry is, it represents $337 billion to the US economy and supports 1.3 million jobs. So they're kind of a big deal. Our conversation with Karen really runs the gamut. We talk a little bit about CEMA's wins, we talk about

[00:01:16] what they're up to, some of their losses. So without me giving away the entire interview in this introduction, let's welcome Karen to the show. Thank you so much for having me buddy. This is going to be a little different than what I normally do for this show but

[00:01:33] I think it's going to be really interesting because if you don't know in this audience that I have, we have engineers, scientists, electricians, people in government, people adjacent to government. Initially, I wasn't sure how I'd present this because my personal experience

[00:01:52] is I actually work for a city government but I have no knowledge of how everything works above my level. I know that there's paths and relationships that need to be forged but I'm insulated from all of that. So I'm going to probably sound ignorant in some of

[00:02:13] this stuff but I'm kind of burying what we're going to talk about today. So why don't we just start off with you telling us a little bit about yourself and then we'll just kind of go into the interview from there.

[00:02:24] Sure, well it's great to be on really quickly taking the time and have SEMA represented. My name is Karen Bailey Chapman. I'm the Senior Vice President of Public and Government Affairs for SEMA, Specialty Equipment Market Association which is basically the automotive aftermarket

[00:02:41] everything you do to your car after you've driven it off the lot but it's all the stuff that maybe all the stuff you don't necessarily need but it's all the stuff you want to make your car faster, cooler, prettier, higher or lower and you know

[00:02:58] personalized to what you want. So we represent that part of the automotive industry. I have a team of gosh I think nine people now working for us on behalf of the specialty automotive aftermarket in Washington DC and in state capitals

[00:03:15] all over the country and in some cases even city governments depending on the issues that we're dealing with. So we may or may not be in your neck of the woods once in a while just depending on what's going on as it relates to our industry.

[00:03:30] Excellent and how does that work? And I want to jump into SEMA as an organization but how does that advocacy and policy, how does that come together from an organization like SEMA and then you know passing that on to politicians or government reps?

[00:03:50] So when people think about SEMA they think about the big trade show in Las Vegas right? The largest trade show right now happening in Vegas every year but what they don't see is the work that we do the rest of the year so we

[00:04:06] don't just put on a show. There's a lot of different facets to SEMA but the government and public affairs part of it is the advocacy as it relates to the industry because people sort of think like well what does that really

[00:04:18] have to do with the aftermarket? Well one of the things that people don't realize they kind of talk about the aftermarket as being kind of a niche, a small part of the market but the reality is that's actually a pretty

[00:04:33] big part of the industry. We're a $337 billion industry, economic impact industry to the US economy. We account for 1.3 million American jobs largely with small businesses across the country because all the cool stuff that we like to have added on to our car, somebody makes it and

[00:04:54] that's who we represent. Somebody sells it, that's who we represent. Somebody then installed it in your vehicle, that's who we represent and so the fact is that there's an industry that happens 365 days a year outside of just the show and so each of those parts of the

[00:05:15] industry need representation when it comes to government. So whether I know obviously on the kilowatt side, on the EV side, emissions aren't necessarily what you would think of from an EV perspective but we can get into that a little bit. But it's just the ability to modify

[00:05:32] your vehicle so whether you want to lift your vehicle, lower your vehicle, put different tires on it. So there's all of these pieces so it's the ability to manufacture it, manufacture those parts and then as a consumer the ability to modify your vehicle to make it your own.

[00:05:49] Isn't there a little bit of a right to repair as well? Absolutely, that's one of the major federal issues at the top of our docket and the ability to continue to modify our vehicle. As cars become more complex, as they become more computers than they are

[00:06:09] sort of the mechanics as we always think of from yesteryear, it's become more complicated and especially with things like advanced driver safety systems and how that impacts and how those systems are impacted based on how we modify our vehicle whether you're putting a

[00:06:24] different kind of bumper on or you're like I said lifting or lowering your vehicle, that all comes into play and right to repair is really an important piece of legislative priority for us. Vehicles into zero emissions vehicles. So right now Californians can receive a rebate if

[00:06:44] they go and buy a new EV and so what we said is like okay well why not extend that to those that are now converting vehicles into zero emissions vehicles and have all the same, all the different standards and and income thresholds and all the different

[00:07:02] pieces that the new EV rebates have and let's extend it to those that want to convert their vehicles. So but unfortunately the governor vetoed the bill. Did he give a reason why? Well, he said it's because of the budget issues that the state are

[00:07:17] facing. Now the thing that you know we sort of disagreed with his reasoning on that because we didn't have the bill, the program wasn't appropriated yet so obviously when you create legislation, you create the legislation but then if it

[00:07:30] costs money you have to have money appropriated to it. We actually said you know look we'd like to have the program created and then we'll go back and find the money elsewhere whether that was through public funding, public private funding. There's

[00:07:44] a lot of different funding sources, federal government and so forth and so we made the try to make the case saying you know look we just want it created because it's hard to appropriate a program that doesn't exist. So sort of a

[00:07:56] little bit of the chicken and the egg but he still decided to go ahead and veto it anyways which is really unfortunate. It was a missed opportunity for him and especially as a growing segment of the industry, especially in the aftermarket with people doing more and more conversions.

[00:08:14] You know it's unfortunate that he saw it that way. Yeah like Robert Downey Jr has given away like 15 cars that he converted. Exactly. I think that's spurring a lot of interest in that particular market even though people have been doing this for years. Exactly.

[00:08:28] But it's making the normal people aware of what's going on. Exactly. Exactly. Okay and how do you find in your position or how open are government officials to having these conversations? I think generally pretty open and you know at the end of

[00:08:48] the day we're car guys and gals and so I think we come in with from a good place. We're also largely small businesses that we represent so that's also really big a pretty big deal. We're also American manufacturing which is also a big

[00:09:04] part of you know tends to open a lot of doors for us when it comes to advocacy. So you know I think all of those combined plus the economic impact that we have from an industry standpoint on the US economy.

[00:09:19] The thought that we put those numbers put those numbers down on paper and saying this is actually who we are and who we represent and what we mean to the US economy. It really does open a lot of doors.

[00:09:31] A lot of the work that we do is very bipartisan and you know we have you know whether you're in Washington or state capitals we tend to have very bipartisan relationships depending on the issue. It's not uniform it's not monolithic but you know

[00:09:46] we generally have a really good opportunity to talk with law makers when we take that time to towerage to them. What is that what is that number what is the the dollar amount? The 337 billion dollar impact to the US economy

[00:10:04] which also translates to 1.3 million jobs here in the US. And I think I do remember you saying that earlier. So with 95 percent of CIMA's members being small businesses this is obviously a really big deal for them. Is there a place that you can point to where you've had

[00:10:30] some successes and maybe we can even talk a little bit about losses and how we recover from those specifically in the EV space but if you don't have specific examples it's okay we can do really anything. Yeah I mean I think some of our wins maybe counter to

[00:10:46] to the EV audience here is that you know we we actually from a CIMA perspective our our policy position is that governments remain neutral when it comes to vehicle technology meaning allow the market to thrive allow the market to decide allow

[00:11:03] consumers to decide and allow innovators to innovate. And so you know EV is obviously a part of the aftermarket for us it's a growing part of the aftermarket but it's something that we believe that government should be shouldn't be dictating what technology consumers must purchase

[00:11:21] and so we believe that there's an opportunity for all all technologies to to thrive and sort out and as the American way is we tend to the market tends to decide sort of ultimately where we land. So we all want to achieve you know cleaner air

[00:11:37] and ensure clean water but let let the innovators innovate but there's been a lot of work that we've done in the space of of moving governments to technology neutral we've actually passed legislation and or resolutions in nine

[00:11:52] states so far in the past year and a half to say that government should remain technology neutral. So it means that they cannot say they can't ban internal combustion engines but equally they can't ban electric vehicles either or any other technology that comes along the way.

[00:12:09] So we want to make sure that going forward that government remains technology neutral. We're dealing with that at the federal level now we we did oppose the EPA legislation that essentially will make EVs the de factoed place nationally by 2032

[00:12:30] but you know again we see it as an opportunity for it that government should be technology neutral versus dictating one over the other. So I'd say those that's been some successes particularly at the at the local level and we've also had

[00:12:47] some opportunity we had a great win this year in Georgia with it for any any folks out there that are listening to you and the ability to continue to lift your vehicle in Georgia. It was actually kind of there was a law that's

[00:13:02] been on the books for about almost 40 years that really kind of if you will it didn't make truck lifts illegal but it made it very ambiguous and so we went in and did some some legislation there to give some more specifications around legislation for

[00:13:27] those that want to lift their vehicles and sort of how to do that and how to do it safely and to meet the specifications that allowed consumers to be able to do that. So so those are a couple things we also do a lot

[00:13:38] in the off-road space and in off highway vehicle access and public lands so there's legislation right now moving through Washington to continue to allow that part of the industry to actually protect that part of the industry and allow continued

[00:13:54] access into the future for our for those of us that are off-roaders in the community to continue that motorized access to our to our off-road community. So that's just a sampling. Yeah that's I mean there's obviously a lot going on

[00:14:08] and if you represent such a wide spectrum of business owners I can completely see why you would want this technology neutral platform simply because you know 95 percent I can't imagine I do you know what the percentage of members that are work specifically on EVs aftermarket parts are?

[00:14:32] So I don't know what the number is specifically on EVs although it's certainly growing but you know just sort of to flip that question on on the side is that 33 percent of our industry is internal combustion engine dependent so their their

[00:14:50] business is built around the internal combustion engine so anyways so just to give some perspective that's about a hundred billion dollars of our industry is ICE dependent. EVs certainly again growing and there's also parts of our industry that it doesn't matter

[00:15:07] what what's powering your vehicle they still have a place whether you're a wheel or tire manufacturer maybe you're an interior restoration person maybe you do audio systems you know obviously wraps and paint jobs and all of that kind of stuff that also that remains unchanged

[00:15:25] so there's still a lot of opportunity within the aftermarket for those that for the EV market and for the EV consumers out there. Gotcha let's let's just shift gears just a little bit and let's talk about

[00:15:41] what kind of things like I highly doubt I could be wrong but I highly doubt anybody in that's listening to this show is a member of SEMA so let's move maybe to a more public facing like what can these folks do if they wanted to learn

[00:15:58] more about what SEMA is doing like what kind of cool things that they can get involved in in their local communities is there that kind of stuff going on at SEMA? Sure I mean there's a lot of opportunities and I think for anybody in your audience that are

[00:16:12] you know in the lawmaking space or the regulatory space or the government compliance space I urge you to reach out to even our office and because we have the opportunity to share a lot of the innovation

[00:16:24] and work that we're doing not only as an association but what all of our members are doing so if people are curious about what's going on or trying to network and make connections we certainly have that ability to help make those connections and we also have if you

[00:16:38] are somebody in the business world looking to bring a product to market or have a product in market we certainly encourage you to come join us as a SEMA business member but then we also have the SEMA individual membership program

[00:16:52] so this is really where we're trying to capture the enthusiast community out there it's you know there's a lot of consumers I'm one myself I don't just advocate for the industry I I'm a consumer myself and so but there's a lot of places where

[00:17:07] you know people have very localized groups I'm a jeep person so you know there's a lot of jeep clubs and you know even in the electric in the electric vehicle market you know Rivian's done a great job in terms of

[00:17:19] their community in sort of group building and everything that they've done but we also have the SEMA individual membership program which gives you some benefit and opportunities to engage with others engage on our advocacy but then also receive things like discounts from

[00:17:34] various manufacturers within the industry so there's a lot of different ways to get involved with SEMA or SEMA aligned organizations or through the organization but certainly if you're you're in that government space or science space and innovation space I encourage you to reach out to our

[00:17:52] office because if anything we have a great opportunity to network network folks with other individuals that they may want to be connected with excellent and then what about the the SEMA garages this is something that I was actually really when I first saw it I did

[00:18:11] I didn't know it existed I didn't know who SEMA was I didn't know very much about the organization if I'm being honest but when I was reading through and I saw the SEMA garages I was like oh this is a really cool thing

[00:18:22] just to offer to folks it is so this is the benefit for business members to utilize our garages they actually started gosh a little over 10 years we built the first garage in our diamond bar office SEMA's actually headquartered in diamond bar

[00:18:36] California and it was started as an admissions compliance garage so this is where as well as a product development garage so basically if you're a manufacturer and you you have a new vehicle there's a new vehicle coming to market from the OE

[00:18:53] we often partnered with the OEMs to do measuring sessions so that you can create products sort of in advance of the launch so if you're going to create a new bumper you're going to create other accessories for the vehicle you kind of have that advanced opportunity

[00:19:07] so that's one of the things that our garage our garages do then we also added in the admissions compliance side of it which is you know when it comes to vehicles on the roads you need to still be admissions compliant but there's a lot of parts of

[00:19:23] our industry especially those that are attached to the internal combustion engine and their performance based engine or performance based parts things like superchargers or tuners or intakes exhaust all of these pieces that touch the emissions systems

[00:19:39] you know they still so you can still modify those on your vehicles but they still need to be compliant with federal and in California's case California emissions loss so our garage opened up the opportunity and the ability for people to do testing for our members to do

[00:19:53] testing of those products to make sure that they are in fact emissions compliant and sellable in the U.S. as well as in California then a couple of years ago we opened up our garage just outside of Detroit which not only has

[00:20:10] emissions compliance testing but it also has ADAPHS testing which ADAPHS is your advanced driver safety systems because that's really the new frontier in terms of vehicle technology and so now people are able to do things like

[00:20:26] how does how does lifting a vehicle affect sensors that are you know lane departure or advanced emergency braking or yeah all the different pieces that come into what we're dealing with what's coming online with regards to safety systems

[00:20:44] and so knowing what those tolerances are and how to calibrate the parts to those systems so that again those that want to modify their vehicles can do so safely. The other thing too that we have the ability to do is range testing for the electric vehicle

[00:21:01] market so we also have those capabilities so it's a pretty pretty significant investment we've invested about 25 million dollars into our garage program but it's it's pretty robust and pretty cool quite frankly and in pretty cutting edge in terms of what we what we offer particularly in the

[00:21:21] in the safety systems space. That's neat and I love the place for because obviously electric vehicles are tuned to the max for every sensor to to this is exactly where the tolerances lie if you go outside of that you know you have

[00:21:41] problems like my car iVitesla and it will frequently see the car in the left lane stopping and alert me that the car in front of me stopping it's become less frequent but when i first got it it was very frequent so i can definitely see like if i

[00:21:55] lifted my car up say two to three inches that would definitely be a problem in terms of recognizing or it could be a problem it could be yeah it could be you'd be surprised at what the tolerance levels are and whatnot so obviously people sort of

[00:22:10] look more towards trucks when they think about that but you know i've also i've also seen i've been to an off-road event where there was a lifted miata so not saying you can't lift a tesla

[00:22:21] yeah no no and i have uh i have friends that do all sorts of weird things to the vehicles and some of it is just like can i do it and i have one friend from my school named Ken

[00:22:34] and he was the first person that i knew that ever did any of this stuff and he had a whole um his whole garage was just dedicated to slamming his dodgy neon down to the ground

[00:22:46] and putting all these aftermarket effects on parts on it it looked it looked hideous but he was just his whole mental state on this was how can i how many things can i do to this car and with a dodgy neon it ended up being

[00:22:59] quite a lot and we grew up in alaska and i swear he had like eight inch wheels on this thing right i don't know how he drove down the dirt roads without damaging his car but um yeah for sure yeah no it's amazing what people

[00:23:12] can do my my brother actually i i think back to i grew up in a car town i grew up in manufacturing family not a car manufacturing family but i remember my my brother took my parents old scout so if you know what a scout is i think

[00:23:25] if you grew up in alaska i think you probably know what a scout is and and so he ended up modifying it and that was really little my brother is a lot older than me um and so this is my first

[00:23:33] remembrance of of modifying and he you know not only did a paint job and he did a lift but he did these velour blue velour see straight out of the vans back in the day right right it was the 80s so

[00:23:53] yeah that's nice i was going to say also the the the folks that i work with if they were ever told that they couldn't lift their trucks i think that would start a revolution yeah for sure so that surprises me in georgia that they had some

[00:24:06] ambiguous rules or regulations on right lifting trucks yeah no it was actually again it was a law that nobody kind of knew about so it's been around for so long and um and then there you know it came to came to be actually in a lawsuit um

[00:24:24] revolving a lifted vehicle in an accident and so that's when everyone's like oh there's this law that's on the books and and so anyway so um so yeah so we one of

[00:24:35] our members had reached out to us about it and we were able to to go in and path legislation to get it back but yeah you think georgia of all places is not like people weren't lifting vehicles and modifying their vehicles but yeah in

[00:24:46] fact there was a law on the books but um we're able to get that that statute amended so that it gave a little bit more guidance and and strength around what you can and cannot do with a vehicle and put some safety parameters around it

[00:25:00] yeah it's good when we introduce common sense to our government i think that always works because we get these laws and you think he said it was like four years ago they they implemented this law that probably had a really good

[00:25:11] intent when they did it um but and now you know somebody's uh dealing with some issue because of uh lawyers and i don't i like lawyers we're not going to take on lawyers today but it's their job to find a place to

[00:25:28] find places in the law to build their best case that's their job that's not we have lawyers lawyers listen to this podcast i'm sorry right we're not going to pick on lawyers

[00:25:38] but yes uh okay so let's talk a little bit about uh seema's next show is it this year next year when when's the next it's every year uh so it's the first full week of november

[00:25:49] so it kicks off november 5th in las vegas we've been in los and las vegas for several decades now and we're looking at a great show once again the numbers are looking great and the shows

[00:26:03] really continue to to regain its steam after you know having to shut it down in 2020 with cobit but we're looking at again sort of reaching our historic numbers from attendant exhibitors and so forth so we're pretty pretty excited about this year's show okay excellent and

[00:26:20] I know this might be outside of your purview within seema but is there any trends that uh you're seeing as a as an organization gosh i mean lots um and i have to also mention too we also

[00:26:33] have the return of seema fest with our show this year or two so which is something we kicked off last year which is um you know really a consumer facing opportunity and concert festival

[00:26:43] type events so there's um information coming out we're we're we're launching all of that over the next couple of weeks um with regards to the bands and everything that'll be coming in for

[00:26:53] seema fest so stay tuned for that but yeah you know when it comes to trends um you know we continue to see a lot of growth in the truck and off-road space still continues to be a really big

[00:27:06] growth area for the industry um the other area honestly that's continuing to grow and garner a lot of interest is our future tech studio which is really where our up-and-coming technology space is it started sort of as an EV suction probably about I don't know three or

[00:27:24] four years ago probably about three years ago and it's really expanded now to to encapsulate all types of low and zero mission innovation so everything from hydrogen ice to hybrids to

[00:27:40] biofuels as well as EVs so that's another area that um is a is a growing interest we have a whole program around the future tech space um so that's why when I talk about you know whether it's

[00:27:53] government officials whether you're elected or you know in the regulatory space this is a great opportunity to come sort of connect with some of that sort of future future tech uh of the

[00:28:05] the of the automotive industry so I'd say those are probably it's sort of the two big big ones as it relates to the show coming out this year excellent and when you have more information

[00:28:14] on the on the seema the consumer event would you call it I'm sorry seema fest seema fest when you have more information on that please pass that along to me and I will talk about it on the on the show and make sure to plug that absolutely would

[00:28:26] love to do that okay how would how would folks get a hold of you so you can reach you can reach well seema just seema.org but if you're interested more in the advocacy space and the work that

[00:28:38] we're doing on the legislative side you can go to seema.org forward slash advocacy or it's just on the top banner of the main page and you can see all the different stuff that are our teams doing whether it's at the federal state or local levels excellent

[00:28:55] and Karen thank you so much for coming on the show um this was a really interesting and like I said it's it's a little bit of a left turn from what I normally talk about

[00:29:04] but I I I really think this is important because in the EV space we have all this cool technology they build really cool cars they're they seem to be from my very limited knowledge of automobiles

[00:29:18] a very a more technologically advanced car than what an ice car would have just because all the bells and whistles that you can do with them however the the companies that have

[00:29:28] that are manufacturing these don't want you to do anything to them and I I'm very much against that I'm very much against them a Tesla being so draconian about the people's right to repair

[00:29:41] especially when you consider that they can't get into a shop in some places and and repair their own vehicle even if it's something super simple so I am I'm 100 on board with what Seema is

[00:29:53] doing in that regard well we appreciate that report we're going to continue to to work work at that and getting these common sense legislation passed and you know it's something that's really a long time coming but something that we really need to do again as the technology

[00:30:10] and vehicles continues to evolve and grow and become become more complex the fact is that we still want to we're still Americans we still like to to modify and personalize our vehicles and

[00:30:21] and you know regardless of what your powertrain is um we should still be able to do it we have the right to absolutely I agree thank you very much Karen I appreciate you coming on great to meet you

[00:30:31] thanks Bodi all right obviously I want to give a big thanks to Karen for agreeing to come on and chat with us and that it was a really informative interview and a fun one at that

[00:30:43] in addition I want to give a big thank you to Diana and Daniel for making this possible really appreciate how easy it was to get this whole thing set up I really appreciate your efforts

[00:30:54] and professionalism thank you all right everybody that is it for me today if you want to learn more about Seema please check the show notes because I'll put information to the organization there and then if you want to follow me on Twitter you can I'm at 918 digital 918 digital

[00:31:11] and if you want to email me it's Bodi B O D I E at 918 digital thanks again everybody and I will talk to you on Friday