"The cost of EV service is less than for gasoline-powered and hybrid vehicles, right?" asked Renee Stephens, a vice president at the data firm WePredict, citing conventional thinking. Then she added: "Wrong."

Her firm’s aggregated repair data indicate EV parts and labor currently cost twice as much as other vehicles.

That’s probably not surprising about EV parts, which can include complex electrical systems. But what about labor? Turns out, that per-hour work really drives up the cost of servicing EVs, Stephens said during an online Automotive Press Association program on a WePredict study on early vehicle-repair costs.

Stephens explained: "EVs require service technicians to spend much more time figuring out what is going wrong. They are on the phone more with the manufacturer. They are on more test drives."

 

Technicians typically write a brief report summarizing their repair orders. What technicians write for EVs can stretch on. "Those reports are paragraphs long, some 1,000 words or more," Stephens said.

"This is part of an industry learning curve," she said, adding that the new generations of established EV models show far fewer issues than do newly introduced versions.

 

For example, the Chevrolet Bolt and Nissan Leaf, which have been on the market for years, did well on WePredict’s ranking of vehicles with low service costs and needs. She expects repair costs will drop as newly introduced EVs are on the market longer and work-in-progress improvements are made for later generations.

EV models that have been around for a while "had issues, too, when they first came out," Stephens said.  "It bodes well to see the improvements with later generations."

 

Unsurprisingly, many of the EV growing-pain service issues center on electrical issues. A frequent one is vehicle charging capability. "The vehicles either are not charging to the levels they should or to what the customer expects," she said. 

 

The most-serviced EV issues involve the electronic controller, high-voltage battery, charger/cable and battery contact, according to the WePredict study.

 

The study is based on data from dealership management systems relating to service issues in the first 90 days of vehicle ownership. Those issues arise from owner complaints or manufacturer recalls or service bulletins.

 

Why are such early costs important, particularly if the manufacturer is covering them with warranty programs? Because they often indicate what’s to come, Stephens said. "Costs can go up 15 times from early on, and at a point where customers have to open their wallets. It’s a multiplication factor. If a vehicle has early issues, it usually doesn’t age well."