Car producers are becoming too caught up in the race to release new technology and are not giving sufficient thought to, or steerage on, reparability, consistent with industry specialists.
This results in extended fleet costs and downtime and, in some cases, the writing off of automobiles when they have to be reparable.
Long car off-avenue instances may also have implications for gain-in-type tax.
Richard Billyeald, chief technical officer at Thatcham Research, said cars are being delivered to the marketplace without repair strategies being released. In one instance, repair techniques were nevertheless no longer available six months after a car’s release.
“Inevitably, there’s large competition within the car marketplace, and generation is shifting so rapidly that it’s far outside the pastimes of the auto producers to provide new capabilities as fast as possible. They’re constantly attempting to compete with their near rivals, but if no one is maintaining a check on it, then such things as reparability can lose their significance,” he said.
Terry Gibson, head of member services at the Independent Garage Association, stated it became “not unusual” for restore methods to no longer be available from launch, even though the difficulty reduced over time.
However, even though it wouldn’t be a main problem for independents wearing out simple repairs, it may postpone crash maintenance, which a body shop would not continue without the restored method he introduced.
Billyeald stated that Thatcham wants to position reparability “lower back on the timetable” this year, starting with tackling “useless” problems, specifically with electric cars (EVs).
“You may have an extraordinarily minor parking impact in which you might have caused a chunk of damage to the bumper or a number of the panels—hitting a bollard, for instance—and that then trips the fuse within the battery, which then calls for you to dispose of the battery and reset it. Suddenly, a £1,000 claim will become an £8,000 claim—simply pointless,” he stated.
The cost of changing batteries in EVs can also suggest that a vehicle becomes uneconomical to restore; even though the equal would certainly be a relief, a diesel or petrol engine must require changing.
Billyeald said that while the battery will no longer be damaged in each effect, while harm does arise, the battery has to be replaced “in quite a lot each case”,” unlike an engine.
“It depends very much on whether it is a hybrid or a full EV; however, the (battery) price range is £6,000 up to £30,000,” he said, the fee differential ranging from a Nissan Leaf to a long-variety Tesla.
In evaluation, fitting a new internal combustion engine (ICE) would normally cost between £5,000 and £10,000.
The bigger trouble comes with disconnecting the battery when performing maintenance, a scenario Zip Water fleet supervisor Graham Short has mastered these days.
“I had a Volkswagen Golf GTE in which the driver stuck the wheel arch on a publish; it becomes minor harm,” Short said. “It went into a coincidence repairer, and they stated, ‘it was given to go to VW to have the battery disconnected’. We needed to ebook it with VW, which couldn’t do it for more than every week. The car went in, the battery became disconnected, and it was sent again to the body shop for the repair to be accomplished. Then bet what? It had to be added and returned to VW to be reconnected. The vehicle changed off the road for about months only for minor harm.”
A Volkswagen spokesperson was “unable to comment” on Short’s enjoy but said that around 98% of its supplier community can repair an EV and deactivate the high-voltage system if it isn’t damaged.
If damaged, it will need a consultant’s assistance from one of 15 store-primarily based battery repair websites or Volkswagen’s technical provider center in Milton Keynes.
The centers were installed to finish more complicated battery restore strategies using the new diagnostic gadget and enormously skilled Volkswagen technicians (high-voltage professionals).
Volkswagen said that if the batteries are bodily damaged, then they might need to be replaced, but every repair is treated on a case-by-case basis.
The spokesperson added that each new version’s restore methods are available at launch.
Short has additionally experienced troubles with parts availability, which could become more severe in the event of a no-deal Brexit.
“We had a Nissan e-NV200 hit at the same time as parked,” Short stated. “It is no longer a large repair, but the van was changed off the road for the same duration because the components should most effectively be procured from Japan.”
A Nissan spokesperson stated, “The Supply of components for EV fashions is similar to that of every other ICE vehicle. We can experience pressure factors, as do all producers, but we encourage dealers to notify us of instances concerning vehicles off the street so that they can be prioritized.”
On the issue of EV reparability, “each Nissan provider have to be able to diagnose, service and restore electric powered vehicles”, the spokesperson said, and “relying on the diagnoses, battery functioning may be re-established via replacing person modules, the battery casing or the entire battery”.
Checking EV battery health, in the meantime, is “an honest 5-minute operation with the Consult diagnostic device used by Nissan sellers across Europe”.
Service and restore manuals are “posted on the start of sales and updated often as required”, introduced the spokesperson.
While franchised sellers can be equipped to restore electric-powered automobiles, it’s far “tougher” for independents and the smaller body shops to spend money on schooling and systems, in step with Billyeald.
“If they’ve been given to buy equipment to cover all of the producers, that’s a massive ask,” he stated.
This should potentially depart fleet operators with much less preference approximately where their cars are repaired – figures from the FN50 display that around 23% of leased motors and 33% of leased trucks are repaired through unbiased workshops, which might normally be cheaper than franchised dealers.
However, Gibson stated: “More and more impartial garages are embarking on educating their technicians to service and repair hybrid and electric cars.
“This safeguards the enterprise due to the potential dangers related to the high voltages inside these cars and offers them business possibilities, differentiating them from neighborhood competitors.”
Fleet Assist, which provides leasing and condo agencies with a community of 5,000-plus franchised and impartial carrier retailers, stated that “honestly all” have the functionality to service and restore hybrid and plug-in cars.
Halfords Autocentres has trained 357 of its 1,500 technicians to IMI Level 2 in electric-powered/hybrid car renovation, enabling it to provide motors across its network of 316 autocentres.
Pete Marden, fleet director, said: “This education offers our technicians the self-belief to paintings on those sorts of automobiles and get right of entry to fault prognosis to consist of battery overall performance through our Bosch KTS device.
“In July, we introduced a brand new bespoke Halfords Hybrid Service to our clients. To date, we’ve completed over one hundred such offerings, around 1% of the total variety of services over this period. This is above the share of penetration of electrical automobiles in the market location, so it is proving a very hit alternative to the OEM provider network for our customers.
“In the following economic year (April 2019 – April 2020), we plan to add the IMI Level 3 award in electric/hybrid vehicle gadget repair and alternative qualification to our training plans if you want to give us the extra capability to repair those systems.”
However, given the fantastically low variety of hybrid and electric motors in the marketplace, a more pressing issue for repairers is that around 55% of new vehicles now have superior driving force assistance systems (ADAS), including self-sustaining emergency braking, geared up as trendy.
These structures can use a combination of cameras, lasers, and radars, which makes maintenance extra complex and expensive, particularly if recalibration is needed following an accident.
Fleet Assist head of community control Chris Crow said: “There is a few marketplace confusion around which ADAS-geared up motors self-calibrate following windscreen alternative and which require recalibration.
“Automotive glazing is becoming more specialized due to the technical nature of glass, and many smaller businesses won’t have the skillset or capability to teach a workforce or to invest in the recalibration gadget.
“That results in a disconnect between glass fitment and the following technical requirement for ADAS recalibration.
“In turn, that lack of clarity might also lead to some fleets/drivers being harassed as to when and wherein a car should be recalibrated, as a few automobile glazing repairers have the functionality to adopt the paintings, while others defer to franchised dealers. That may also bring about a capability postponement within the important paintings being undertaken as, yet again, lead instances have, in a few cases, improved.”
Developments in the headlight era are also having an effect, as they often need to be replaced rather than repaired when broken.
Billyeald believes the increase in price caused by producers transferring from halogen to xenon generation some years ago became “no longer unreasonable.” However, the current proliferation of the LED era has made headlights “terrific pricey to update,” mainly while matrix headlights, which dynamically flow with guidance, are used.
“They give you terrific visibility; however, manifestly, there are plenty of shifting components, and the charges are going up in step with that,” he said.
“We’ve seen big rate rises from £a hundred to a few thousand.”
This affords challenges for leasing organizations and their fleet clients.
Kit Wisdom, operations director at Tusker, informed delegates at the BVRLA Industry Outlook event: “The broken headlamp on the stop of agreement may be £1,000-plus. The consumer isn’t waiting for that because that’s not what they’ve seen previously, and, as an enterprise, we want to be better at communicating that.”
Jason King, managing director of Bayfield Vehicle Hire, said, “Low-stage harm can spiral out of control. Something as simple as a chip in a windscreen can boost to an £800 bill. We’re looking to apprehend ourselves why that is the case and then communicate that back to the client.”
But it’s now not just the era in automobiles making upkeep more hard and steeply-priced, it’s also the substances and becoming a member of techniques used by manufacturers as they try to make motors lighter to meet strict emissions guidelines.
Smart repairs can also be contentious. In Billyeald’s view, car manufacturers may be “unreasonable” about where clever repairs are done on an automobile fitted with sensors, which, once more, can boom restore fees.
“We will be challenging car producers on that,” he said.
Gibson delivered: “There are instances in which the vehicle manufacturers set limits on the type and regions of repair on bumpers to ensure safety structures keep their characteristics as supposed. This, once in a while, can cause debate among garages and insurers and garages and clients due to the accelerated price of replacing a component that could otherwise have been a repairable proposition.”
Overall, repair payments rose 5% to £three billion last yr, with the average repair invoice at £2,137, consistent with the cutting-edge information from the Association of British Insurers.
Costs are expected to boom similarly – the BVRLA Industry Outlook 2019 document predicts a mean repair bill of £2,500, although some say it could be better.
Tim Bailey, fleet director of Northgate Vehicle Hire, who worked in twist of fate management previous to joining Northgate in March last yr, stated he turned into already seeing average expenses of £2,500 and expected it might “grow even higher than that” this year. He additionally expects greater vehicle write-offs.
However, fleets have to take into account that, even as restore fees are growing, they need to see fewer crashes because of ADAS.
Billyeald said: “ADAS is all approximately preventing that crash or mitigating its effect so don’t just take a look at the value, take a look at the overall photo – the quantity of write-offs and frequency of claims in addition to the fee of them.”
Bayfield Vehicle Hire has already experienced the price and safety benefits of ADAS.
King said: “We had as soon as incident remaining 12 months in which one among our cars went into the lower back of an HGV. We concept the automobile could be written off, a total loss, and questioned how injured the passenger would be.
“But whilst we got in touch with the motive force the passenger turned into all proper and when we noticed the automobile it wasn’t too terrible. That become partly all the way down to the generation inside the vehicle, the pre-collision braking had kicked in and taken over that state of affairs. It may want to have without difficulty been a complete loss.”
BIK REDUCES WHEN CAR NOT AVAILABLE
Fleet managers need to monitor the number of days a car is off the road for BIK tax.
HMRC regulations state that if a vehicle is unavailable or off the street being repaired for a minimum of 30 consecutive days, the chargeable advantage is reduced in percentage to the number of days for the duration of the 12 months it became unavailable.
However, if the driver is in a courtesy automobile, then BIK is charged as though their ordinary automobile became available without a reduction. The BIK charge can be adjusted so that the substitute vehicle is materially higher than the ordinary vehicle or the employee is provided with a better automobile under an association.
