And what are you doing there? A brief report on how electric cars are faring in the workshop – and how the workshop itself is coping with them
Reading time: 6 minutes
‘You need to move with the times, even if it requires a lot of learning and training’. Rui Costa is a friendly, optimistic Swabian who services and repairs electric cars in Kirchheim near Stuttgart. Costa is a workshop manager and master car mechanic who specialises in Ford and electric drives at Schmauder & Rau, an independent workshop with a Ford service facility that is a traditional company in the region.
What’s different about working with electric
Costa is one of two ‘high voltage employees’. These are members of staff who have completed the high voltage certificate, the most comprehensive of the high voltage training courses and one that allows them to be in charge when staff start working on an electric car. ‘I always think that you shouldn’t fear electric mobility. But always respect it. And you really do need to know what you’re doing’.
The biggest difference compared to working with combustion engines is making staff aware of the risk to life when working with high voltage technology, says Costa, emphasising this fundamental point. Labour regulations require the type, time and duration of the activity to be precisely documented, plus how and for how long the vehicle was de-energised. And the responsibility for this is assumed by someone like Costa.
‘You can’t just start working on it’, explains Costa, based on his experience in the workshop. ‘It’s also not enough to pull the plug out or look at the manual to check whether the engine is de-energised or not. No, you’ve got to measure and check yourself whether the so-called pilot line has been deactivated and ensure there is no voltage running through it’. The pilot line is a protective device that guarantees the safety of the workshop staff when dealing with electric vehicles.
If you know one electric car, you know them all
What sets electric cars apart is that they are a lot heavier and large models easily weigh a tonne or more thanks to the weight of the batteries alone. This means that workshops need to adapt their lifting equipment accordingly. ‘We’ve procured new scissor lifts’, explains Costa, ‘but not dedicated electric lifting platforms. When an electric car comes in, the lift is closed and signs put up so that no unauthorised individuals can come into contact with it.’
Costa is a pioneer of e-mobility: he has been servicing Post and DHL street scooters for many years –the small parcel delivery vans developed and launched on the market in 2010 by two university professors in Aachen. Their efficiency meant that they were a minor revolution at the time. ‘The e-scooters are very simply built’, says Costa, ‘and they have to deal with extreme loads when they travel three, four or ten metres to the nearest letterbox a hundred times a day. These conditions mean that they need to visit the workshop more often than a normal electric vehicle, but otherwise they aren’t really so different from more costly models’. If you know one electric car, you know them all, says Costa: ‘They’re all constructed in the same way. All of them have a motor, an electric motor, a gearbox, batteries and a cooling system. The cooling system, which ensures the thermal stability of the batteries, is almost the most important thing in an electric car’.
Electric cars are simple but also super tricky
The design of an electric car is simple. By contrast, the cooling and heating circuits that keep the batteries at the right temperature, not to mention the interconnectivity of the hardware and software, are so complex that they require staff to undergo a lot of training in addition to the costly high voltage training. Depending on the format, this can cost up to 10,000 euros per person. ‘We had to jump right into the deep end at the start’, says Costa, ‘but it’s better now. You need the software and manufacturer’s workshop manuals, otherwise you’re stuck. With combustion engines, you could work it out yourself’. Associations have also been pushing for improved information and for workshops to get involved.
‘You need the software and manufacturer’s workshop manuals, otherwise you’re stuck. With combustion engines, you could work it out yourself.’
Until recently, the mood in many workshops was a mixture of scepticism and reluctance regarding the acceptance of e-mobility in Germany. The 1.4 million electric vehicles that were registered at the start of 2024 in Germany seemed to point to less employment and therefore business due to their measurably lower susceptibility to repairs on account of fewer rotating parts – an electric drive comprises around 210 parts, just 15 per cent of those found in a combustion engine.
There were concerns about having to deal with unrewarding, unmanageable areas of business, such as the repair or replacement of batteries, but these are now carried out by specialist providers. Long wait times for parts and therefore lots of downtime, higher costs for replacement parts and legal uncertainties when handling damaged electric vehicles were some of the other pessimistic scenarios.
Associations and trade media warned about high start-up costs (premises, technology, staff training, safety etc.) in the face of uncertain refinancing. The risks seemed to outweigh the opportunities.
What do electric cars really mean for the automotive industry?
‘We have more than 125 years of experience with combustion engines, but only around ten years with modern electric vehicles, so we’re on a learning curve’, says Christian Sahr from the Allianz Centre for Technology (AZT). ‘Electric cars are an important component in the mobility transition. If we want to increase the number of these vehicles, maintenance costs will play an important role. When it comes to repair costs, we’re currently seeing that they are higher than those of comparable combustion engines and they must be reduced to ensure that mobility remains affordable. For this, we need improved replacement criteria and diagnostic and repair options for high voltage batteries as well as educating people on how to deal with damaged electric cars’.
‘When it comes to repair costs, we’re currently seeing that they are higher than those of comparable combustion engines and they must be reduced to ensure that mobility remains affordable.’
Repair costs in particular are currently still difficult to predict, at least in terms of workshop services. According to a study by the German General Association of Insurers (GDV), the average damage claim on fully comprehensive insurance is up to 35 per cent higher than for comparable combustion engines, but the frequency of damage occurrence is up to 15 per cent lower. For third-party coverage, so for accidents in which a car causes damage to others, the damages amount is only slightly higher. ‘The type of drive only has a minor influence on the amount of damages’, says GDV CEO Jörg Asmussen. Thanks in part to lower mileages and average speeds, there are still fewer claims on fully comprehensive and third-party insurance overall for electric cars. However, insurers are warning about future developments. The reason for this is the high costs of battery damage and the expensive and time-consuming recoveries and securing of high voltage vehicles involved in accidents.
GDV CEO Jörg Asmussen is open about the fact that some of the higher repair costs will be balanced out by the considerably lower claims frequency for electric cars: ‘When it comes to third-party insurance, electric cars cause on average five to ten per cent fewer accidents than comparable combustion engines’, says Asmussen. The reason for this seems to be the more cautious driving of electric car drivers.
Electric cars and their problem areas
The frequently reported ‘problem areas’ on electric cars that are a result of their changed statics (lower centre of gravity because of batteries built into the floor), such as the higher load on the chassis, axle suspension and brakes, and the allegedly higher wear and tear on the tyres (because of higher torque) have been confirmed by the strict tests carried out by the TÜV, but the results vary considerably between models.
TÜV association CEO Dr Joachim Bühler sees frequent defects in the front axle suspension and brakes in all brands that have been tested. The function of the foot brake was also criticised more frequently than average. ‘Defects in the brakes occur more frequently than average in all the electric cars tested’, says Bühler.
‘Defects in the brakes occur more frequently than average in all the electric cars tested.’
Manufacturers are quick to counter any identified defects using technical innovation. Workshop professional Costa reports enthusiastically about the one-pedal system in new models where braking energy is not just recuperated, but acceleration and braking are also combined in one pedal. ‘It’s so precise’, laughs Costa, ‘that wear and tear is down to zero per cent’.
Recalls are the new car test
Markus Thoben, electric car expert at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts in Dortmund, gives electric cars a good report: ‘The drive comprising motor and power electronics is less susceptible than in combustion engines’, his investigations have shown, ‘but the driver assistance systems that are more often present in electric cars have introduced new sources of faults into the car. Owners will need to get used to updates and recalls’.
And this is something Costa confirms from his practical experience: ‘Recall campaigns play a major role with us. In this day and age, customers supposed to try things out for themselves. Often it’s just a software update, the engine characteristics are rewritten, and it works again’, Short pause. ‘But as I said, when this electric story started, I would never have thought that electric cars would cause so few problems’. Opportunities recognised!
