Drivers are facing increasing delays in getting their cars repaired as cash-strapped manufacturers struggle to maintain a healthy stock of spare parts for an increasingly complex car parc.
Readers have alerted Autocar to the issue in recent months, sharing their experiences of long waits.
One reader had a Range Rover Sport P400e with a JLR dealer for seven weeks before its drive battery fault was diagnosed and a part wait time of more than a year was relayed. Another’s Hyundai Ioniq 5 had been off the road for 10 weeks awaiting a part that was still “two to three more weeks” away.
Their experiences tally with the findings of the latest Reliability Survey by Autocar sibling title What Car?. Of the nearly 10,000 respondents who had a problem with their car last year, more than one in 10 were made to wait more than a week for repairs.
The issue also has significant ramifications for businesses. According to a new report by leasing firm Arval, almost a quarter of UK fleets recorded an increase in vehicle downtime over the past year.
The main reason for that, according to Ben Townsend, head of automotive at risk analyst Thatcham Research, is the increasing complexity of new cars, which require more parts.
He explained: “Look at a windscreen replacement as a simple example. If you go back 15 years, windscreen replacement was [swapping] a piece of glass that could be done in your driveway. Now it’s a piece of glass that’s potentially got a camera behind it, that’s potentially got radar or lidar attached to it, that’s potentially got a heated windscreen matrix. All of that adds to the complexity.
“It also requires specialist tooling and calibration that requires more specialist tooling. So what has been a circa-£300 job on your driveway becomes a circa-£1500 job at a specialist centre that may take two days. That requires a courtesy car.
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I have no sympathy for the OEM's.
They have created this complexity, most of which was never asked for by consumers. Its a nonesense.