When it comes to electric vehicle servicing costs there is a general assumption that EVs require far less attention and are therefore cheaper to maintain. Indeed this type of thinking has led many to believe that the days of a lot of independent garages are limited because of this. However a recent comparison survey has painted a different picture. 

The epyx study of real world fleet data in the UK compared servicing costs of petrol, diesel and EV vehicles, based on information from the 1link Service Network, a service, maintenance and repair platform which manages some four million fleet cars, vans and trucks. The study looked at number of workshop visits, costs and vehicle off the road days. 

Using the example of a hatchback car over a three year and 25-30,000 mile cycle, the study found that the electric version of the vehicle averaged 5.7 workshop visits over the period with £431 spent of servicing and tyres and 3.2 days spent off the road. By contrast a similar petrol hatchback visited the workshop 5 days and had a reduced bill of £412, although it spent more days off the road at 4.5. 

However, EV vans fared much better in the survey, able to more than halve diesel maintenance costs and with less downtime. EVs also performed better when compared to premium petrol SUVs, cutting off road time and reducing costs from £996 to £645. 

Charlie Brooks, strategy director at epyx said, “It has been widely supposed that EVs will deliver uniform SMR benefits over petrol and diesel vehicles because of the fact that they have fewer moving mechanical parts, minimising the likelihood of breakdown and requiring less routine maintenance. The data we have compiled shows that this is not always the case. Broadly, while workshop costs for some EVs represent substantial savings over their petrol and diesel equivalents, this cannot be assumed. Also, the number of times that EVs visit garages for maintenance or repair and the amount of time they spend unavailable off road are consistently similar to ICE vehicles – and these servicing factors very much represent a substantial cost to businesses.”