What are the owners most afraid of? It's not a retrenchment. It's not a charge line. It's a broken car。
With the growing number of green cars on the road, an embarrassing reality has surfaced: our new energy vehicle holdings have exceeded 43 million, with the front-end production and sales booming, but the back-end service is trapped in the “low ground” where skilled technicians will be hard to reach. On the one hand is the complaint of the owner of the car, who is “difficult and expensive” and on the other hand the embarrassment of the repair shop, who “can't pick up”. How do we close this gap
I can afford it. I can't fix it
At 8 a. M. On working day, mr. Zhang, a citizen of jinan, sat in his new energy car and started the vehicle without hearing anything. Since the purchase of the first new energy vehicle in 2022 and the replacement last year of the fuel car in his home, mr. Zhang has become a truly new energy “bike family”. "the greatest feeling is silence, intelligence, and savings." mr. Chang laughed. In the past, he had a headache at the cost of fuel when driving fuel trucks, and it would cost nearly $2,000 to refuel for daily commuters and field trips. Now, two vehicles are charged less than $300 a month at a charge point。
But it's not so easy when it comes to maintenance。
Owing to mr. Zhang's frequent high-speed travel, the frequency of car tire replacement is relatively high. He thought that a new energy car could be replaced with a fuel car for a few hundred dollars, and that, for the first time in shop 4s, the staff member gave him the price he needed: a tire, $1550. The tires had to be replaced again, and he had approached a familiar repair plant decisively, which was cheaper this time, but one tyre also cost nearly $1,000。
A few days ago, mr. Zhang had to return to his home town for an unexpected tumble. At that time, the floor of the vehicle was strewn by a hard rock slope, while the batteries of the new energy vehicle were installed at the bottom position. The maintenance programme offered by the 4s shop tests is a heavy one: detection, maintenance, replacement of spare parts... Mr. Zhang can't help but wonder: "how can it be so expensive to fix a car like a car
Mr. Zhang is more than alone in similar distress. Ms. Jung, the owner of another new energy vehicle, said that she had been in pain and suffering. A short time ago, when she fell back into the garage in the subdistrict, she accidentally hit the rear vision mirror on the side of the vehicle on the hangar. She didn't care too much at the time, “i thought a few hundred bucks would be done with a shell or lens”。
However, when she drove her car to 4s, she found that it was far from as simple as it could have been. Upon inspection, the maintenance consultant at 4s told her that the rear-view mirror of the new energy vehicle was not a simple mechanical component, but a combination of integrated electronics, such as electric regulation, folding, heating, blind zone monitoring and even cameras. Although the outer surface is only broken, multiple internal electronic components have also been damaged by impact and cannot be replaced alone, and must be replaced by the total。
Ms. Chung's headache was compounded by the need to redeploy parts from the field because parts of the model were not available locally. The flat amount given by the 4s store was over 5,700 and stated that the vehicle would need to remain in the shop until the spare parts were delivered and that she would be notified of the vehicle upon completion of installation, which was expected to take nearly a week. "i was blindfolded, and a mirror was close to $6,000." ms. Chung recalled that “and that these days are not of any use for cars and that it is not easy to get to work and take children”
Industry sources have told journalists that the cost of repairing new energy vehicles in the event of a slight scratch is 2 to 2. 5 times higher than the cost of fuel trucks, and that it would be even more expensive if it involved battery and electrical maintenance. Data from the ministry of public security show that, by the end of 2025, the national stock of new energy vehicles had exceeded 43. 97 million, but only 20,000 to 30,000 enterprises with the capacity to maintain new energy vehicles had clearly inadequate market supplies. More crucially, only 2 to 3 per cent of the new energy maintenance businesses currently have real maintenance capacity for the “triple power system”. Most of the stores with the brand “new energy maintenance” are capable of conducting only basic services such as tire exchange, gold exchange and paint spray。
It's hard to fix. It's expensive
To understand why the maintenance of new energy vehicles is expensive and difficult, it needs to start with changes in the vehicle itself。
Sam dong won, chairman of the board of directors of innovative energy, song yidong, gave a quote to the journalist: fuel and new energy vehicles are completely two tracks. “traditional fuel trucks are mechanically driven, mainly by engines and gear tanks, so that maintenance personnel can work with a wrench. New energy vehicles are turned into power cells, controllers, dominated by smart controls, and you have to carry a universal watch, an insulation watch, a computer.” in other words, it used to be mechanical, and now it's electrical circuits and codes. Huji, the new energy manager in deutsche zusammenarbeit, has also observed that many unqualified maintenance staff are half-aware of the battery structure, even miscalculating normal battery decay and burying safety risks。
In an interview with the media, zhisheng, an engineer in chinese gas information technology (tientsin) ltd., also stated that the maintenance of new energy vehicles involved high voltage electrical safety operations, battery management systems, diagnostics of vehicle-borne software across a wide range of fields of specialization, and that maintenance technicians were required to hold high-voltage electric certificates. However, this examination is difficult, and many people are reluctant to do so。
In an interview with the media, xu fenghui, deputy director of the department of labor and economics of the university of economics and trade of the capital, stated that the technological integrator of new energy vehicles was far faster than that of traditional cars, that smart driving systems were subject to an average of six months of algorithm upgrading and that back-end maintenance services were prone to faults of capacity. Of even greater concern is the fact that technology has changed and people have not kept up. According to the guidelines for the development of manufacturing talent development, the gap between energy conservation and new energy automobiles was projected at 1. 03 million in 2025, of which 80 per cent were in after-sales services。
Why is it so difficult to develop a new energy mechanic? Xu fenghui calculated the cost of acquiring high-pressure training equipment five times more than traditional equipment, the cost of annual maintenance of smart diagnostic tools and the cost of patenting, such as battery dismantling, thus increasing the cost of single-person training to several times that of traditional maintenance workers. In addition, intra-industry ecology is creating resistance. Song yee-dong talks about the dilemma of getting employees to learn new energy maintenance techniques, with the owner paying for them, who are likely to be taken away by high pay immediately after they have completed their studies; and preventing employees from learning and transforming their businesses. A number of employers have chosen to wait and see the situation。
The authorization system of the mainframe is equally binding. The three core components of batteries, electric appliances and electrical controls are generally not authorized for maintenance at 4s, as responsibility is difficult to divide. To be authorized, maintenance requires qualifications, staff training and specialized equipment, which alone costs between $80,000 and $100,000. According to ji-yun, the failure codes of new energy vehicles, traffic data, etc., are largely held in the hands of mainframe and battery manufacturers, third-party maintenance agencies are “unable” or “failed” to repair, and may lose life-long security, with legal liability in the event of an accident。
Multi-stakeholder efforts to fill the brain drain
In the face of the maintenance difficulties behind the 43 million new energy vehicles, industry parties are exploring ways to break through。
At the policy level, data barriers are being broken. In april this year, the interim scheme for the recycling and integrated use of used and end-of-life motor batteries in new energy vehicles was put into effect, requiring power-cell enterprises to provide the relevant new energy vehicle producers, motor vehicle repair companies, etc., with new energy vehicle-powered battery codes and the necessary information on dismantling technologies; and new energy car-producing enterprises to make information on vehicle maintenance technologies available in a timely and efficient manner, in accordance with national regulations. Expert analysis means that core data on new energy vehicles are available to third-party maintenance agencies and that the problem of “failure” is expected to improve。
In education, the guidelines for the development of manufacturing talent development, developed jointly by the ministry of education, the ministry of human resources and social security and the ministry of industry and information technology, provide direction for human capacity development. New energy vehicle testing and maintenance have been widely introduced at the national institute of technology and technology and have become a major focus of industrial integration. In the case of shandong road technicians college, only about 40 students were enrolled in one class in 2018 for new energy vehicle testing and maintenance, expanding to nearly 500 in nine classes by 2025, accounting for over half of the enrolment in the automobile engineering department。
But expansion is only the first step, and quality improvement is fundamental. “to solve the problem of talent, it is necessary to integrate deeply.” the most effective culture model, according to song xiaodong, is the full incorporation of first-line maintenance standards, real-time processes, specialized equipment and real-life failures into school teaching, allowing students to participate in standardized physical exercise at school. Such a model would enable students to achieve “graduation, induction and high pay”, address the employment difficulties of graduates, and significantly reduce the cost of pre-employment training in enterprises and fill the huge talent gap in the industry. “some enterprises in suzhou have already done so, and students attend school classes in schools, while the rest of the time is devoted to learning according to business standards.”
Song xiaodong further indicated that institutions needed to complete the curriculum for vocational planning so that students could clearly understand the needs and prospects for development in the sector and reverse the two-way dilemma of lost employment and employment difficulties. In guangdong, a maintenance plant has adopted the “training-certification-employment” closed-ring model, with a daily average of 30 and 40, providing a replicable sample for the industry。
In addition to human capacity development, the innovation of maintenance models is also under way. In collaboration with the insurance company, son yee-dong recently launched a “low carbon rehabilitation” project. And he said, "what's low-carbon repair? For example, when driving the car, the battery is accidentally slit, and there is no need to change the package as a whole as many maintenance facilities do. The maintenance can be completed through a standardized process of professional dismantling, testing, local restoration, re-sealing, and security clearance, as a result of the authorization of multiple brand batteries. The cost of repairs can be significantly reduced compared to the overall replacement, and all maintenance processes follow the standards of the plant, after which the vehicle will continue to benefit normally from the original plant. ". For the owner, the maintenance costs were significantly reduced; for the insurance company, the losses were effectively reduced and the efficiency of the settlement was optimized。
The road to failure goes beyond repair per se and beyond the construction of a complete market ecology for new energy vehicles. Song yee-dong referred in particular to the pains and opportunities of the second-hand car circulation chain. He suggested that a diagnostic test be done before each vehicle entered the market. In his view, the emergence of a specialized testing accreditation body could provide for “dismantling, detectable, serviceable” certification of second-hand vehicles and be insured by the institution. This has not only increased market confidence, but has also opened up new business growth points for maintenance enterprises。
New energy vehicle maintenance difficulties are a systemic challenge, requiring multiple efforts from mainframe factories, maintenance enterprises, vocational colleges, insurance companies and even the used car market. When talent development keeps pace with technological typologies, when the maintenance network is wider, when insurance cooperation becomes more intensive, when the circulation of used vehicles becomes more transparent, and when new energy vehicles are “hard and expensive” to repair, the difficulties will eventually be solved。
