The automotive sector has built better and more reliable cars in recent decades – but, according to data from the What Car? Reliability Survey, 10.9% of new and nearly-new vehicles over the past two years suffered a breakdown that made them undriveable.
EVs came off worst, with 16.8% of owners saying their car had broken down in the last 24 months compared to 10.7% of petrol car owners, 14.1% of Hybrids, and 15.4% of diesel drivers.
Worryingly, in only 25% of EV breakdowns did recovery services get the car going again whereas 40% of petrol cars were fixed at the roadside.
Notably, the AA last year reported that 30% of EV breakdowns were caused by parts shared with ICE vehicles; the tyres, wheels, brakes and 12V batteries.
As for ‘out of charge’ EV breakdowns, the AA reported that the rolling 12-month figure for this (in 2023) was just 2.26% of cases.
Mark Darvill, managing director and owner of Hillclimb Garage in High Wycombe’s Downley, is positive about EVs.
Having been involved with them since 2020, he notes that when an EV breaks down, the challenge owners have is actually finding a repair centre. Darvill believes that main dealers don’t have the capacity to repair EVs and so rely on the independent network: “Vehicle manufacturers just haven't got the resource… we get so many vehicles bought to us because the dealers are in the same boat.”
On top of that, a broken-down EV “generally needs recovering” – it cannot be towed as that can damage the motors. And when some of the specialists Darvill mentions are as far away as Gloucester, drivers local to him needing challenging fixes find themselves in a bind.
That said, EVs don’t need to be serviced as frequently. Yet Darvill notes that charging problems are a common fault - “something has failed, and drivers just can't charge their vehicle”. Battery cell failures are another issue, as are “a lot of 12v faults which won’t allow the vehicle to power up”.
And this is something that Charlie Lee, vehicle technician at Summertown Garage in Oxford, sees too: “12v batteries can sometimes go faulty as the primary circuit and the secondary circuit (main batteries) have to talk to each other at the same time for them to start the car.”
Even so, he also says that EVs are often in for minor issues such as a charge cable port having a locking problem rather than the failure of a motor or something else catastrophic.
Lee also finds that EVs going into failsafe mode causes more problems than anything else: “They throw a fault and then the system tries to protect itself and cuts out all power and stops moving.”
Garages need information to diagnose faults. Darvill says that for this he relies on organisations such as the IGA and IAAF for what he needs.
Hillclimb Garage has a specialist EV bay and is investing more in EV equipment. With his facilities, Darvill thinks that most repairs are “fairly straightforward once you've got the knowledge”.
Lee too acknowledges that EVs are easier to work on, saying that “all they are is just a motor and batteries at the end of the day and don't have things like EGR valves, turbos, or other components that can fail”.
But repairs to EVs aren’t cheap - Darvill reckons that EV bills tend to be much higher than for ICE cars. “If you get a petrol car in… with an ignition problem, you might see an invoice value of around £250-300,” he said. “But if you’ve got to have a new charge port fitted… that can cost around £900.” But Darvill reminds that EVs still have steering, suspension and brakes that need looking after as they would in an ICE car.
For Lee billing of EV repairs, overall, is little different to ICE in the long term, since reduced service costs are countered by other costs that ICE cars don’t see (while also suffering the same issues ICE cars do). He cites the Renault Zoe, on which ball joints often fail. Tyres need replacing because the car is heavy. And then there are Teslas that have a creak when ball joints go dry.
But he has had a few customers whose cars have suffered ongoing problems – “and we do get the complaints about the older vehicle; we're getting 10-year-old vehicles with battery range problems.” That said, Lee is seeing Teslas with up to 140,000 miles on the original battery.
Ultimately, EVs are still relatively new and suffer problems like ICE – it’s just that while some of the issues are common, others are radically different and need a different set of skills to resolve.
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