Originally published by Auto Success: April 28, 2026
A real-world collision reveals the dangers of improper ADAS calibration. Brian Epro explores how dealerships can turn a safety necessity into a major revenue opportunity.
It’s never a fun feeling when a police officer approaches you and asks, “Are you the owner of the Volvo wagon parked in the first row?” I had just stepped out of my gym when he asked me. With a sinking feeling, I told him I was, and he accompanied me outside to show me how a rental U-Haul had clipped the front end of my wagon as it turned left through the gym parking lot. “Clipped” is a pretty anodyne word for what happened. More like “tore the front end of the wagon clean off.” The rear of the truck had somehow hooked into the front right inner fender and took it along for the ride.
Despite how bad it looked, it was really only the front bumper and some associated parts. The insurance company elected to fix it, so we went through the usual process: got a rental car, got the estimate and left the car with our chosen body shop for a few weeks while they fixed its face. At the end of the process, they returned the wagon to us looking good as new.
ADAS calibration is not only a critical service for the safety of your customers but also a massive revenue opportunity” – Brian Epro
Except it wasn’t. The wagon behaved differently. It was equipped with multiple ADAS systems (Advanced Driver Assistance Systems) such as automatic emergency braking, dynamic cruise control, parking sensors (it could even parallel park itself). After spending time driving it and experiencing wandering on the highways and false positives for the parking sensors, we came to find out the various cameras and radar sensors in the front end of the vehicle had not been properly calibrated. The body shop had simply slapped on a new front end and sent us on our way. This was more than 10 years ago, so perhaps they didn’t know any better.
Not today. ADAS calibration with pre- and post-scanning and reporting is not only a must-do for safe collision repair, but it’s a tremendous opportunity for additional revenue in dealerships and body shops. Put the money angle aside for the moment and think in terms of safety. In today’s vehicles, all the systems that help the car brake itself and perform other “magic” such as driving themselves — automatically speeding up or slowing down and keeping us from colliding with vehicles in our blind spots — need proper calibration when there is any physical event within the vicinity of the related cameras or sensors.
These are the eyes and ears of the vehicle and it’s important to realize that something as minor as a one-degree error in a front facing camera translates to a 5-foot error at 300 feet in front of the car. So, when your vehicle is driving itself on the highway at 75 mph, it might be looking for obstacles in the next lane over while missing what’s right in front of it. Keep in mind, 300 feet at 75 mph takes 2.73 seconds to cover. If something is in your lane but your ADAS is calibrated improperly, you are probably going to hit it.
Now, the money. The size of the opportunity for ADAS is growing exponentially. Currently, over 90% of new vehicles are equipped with ADAS features that require calibration and there are currently over 100 million ADAS-equipped vehicles on the road. In 2029, when automatic emergency braking becomes a legal requirement, every new vehicle sold in the U.S. will be ADAS equipped. The pool of vehicles in need of calibration is going to go through the roof.
There are already dealerships and independent companies seeing wild success by offering ADAS calibration to their customers. The average per-car revenue for ADAS calibration is $700, and that’s conservative. What really gets compelling is when you realize that, on average, 61% of collision repairs require ADAS calibration, yet only 31% of initial estimates include it. The amount of money being left on the table is staggering.
The current size of the ADAS calibration market is around $1 billion. It is projected to hit $3 billion by 2030. That means it will triple in the next three years. ADAS calibration is not only a critical service for the safety of your customers, but also a massive revenue opportunity. I’ll get into the nuts and bolts of what’s required to provide profitable ADAS calibrations in my next article.
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