The technician the next car will need.

01 / What Electrosmiths is

A trade standard for work the qualifications never caught up with.

Automotive electronics moved faster than the training did. Zonal architectures, encrypted gateways and 800 volt systems arrived while the trade tests stayed where they were. There is no recognised way for a technician doing module-level work to prove it — and no way for a workshop or an insurer to check.

Electrosmiths exists to close that gap. It is:

• An assessment, not a course. You are not taught and then passed. You demonstrate the work.
• Bench-based. Real boards, real faults, your own tools, your own method — assessed on whether the fault is found and the repair holds.
• A public record. Once certified, a workshop or customer can verify what you were assessed on.
• The route to becoming an approved Key Clinic partner. Passing is how a technician gets listed as an approved repair centre — and how work gets routed to them.

If a competency cannot be demonstrated on a bench with a scope and a soldering iron, it does not appear in the standard.

02 / The founding exam

5+ years' experience — sit it free of charge

We are inviting experienced technicians to sit it first.

Before this becomes something anyone pays for, it has to survive contact with technicians who already know the work. If you have more than five years in automotive electronics, you are invited to sit the founding exam at no cost.

In return we want to be told where it is wrong — what it tests that it should not, what it misses, and what a competent technician would consider unfair. That feedback is the point of the founding round.

What passing gets you: certified status on the Electrosmiths register, and listing as an approved Key Clinic repair centre — the network customers are referred to when they need this work done properly. The founding cohort is listed first.

Fewer than five years? Still fill it in. We will keep your details and come back to you when the standard opens more widely.