You Thought EVs Were Low Hassle Due To Low Maintenance? Think Again

In theory, it’s true that electric vehicles (EVs) cost less to maintain than their internal combustion engine (ICE) counterparts. After all, they contain way fewer mechanical parts. No more ICE, no more transmission, axles, differentials, and all the complicated workings of a cooling system. Yes, a battery does have a liquid-cooling system, but it’s nowhere near as complicated as the one on an ICE. Electric motors rarely require maintenance, and we’re realizing that batteries last longer than we originally expected. Except for brakes and suspension components, there isn’t much to do on an EV to keep it on the road.

Yet, a recent study from CDK Global reveals that EV owners have been going to their local dealer more often, and waiting longer for repairs. The numbers have actually gone up from 2023 to 2024. What exactly is going on?

85 Percent Of EV Owners Had To Visit Their Service Department In The First Year Of Ownership

The data pulled from CDK’s EV Ownership Study is quite interesting, and rather alarming. What we’re noticing is that new EVs don’t necessarily break down, but they seem to constantly need fine-tuning, most often software-related. From the survey, 13 percent of EV owners said they had to pay for their service, while 16 percent said their service appointment was for a recall.

But as a whole, the study found that a whopping 85 percent of EV owners had to visit their dealership’s service department for some kind of maintenance or repair during the first year of ownership. Waiting times have also increased versus the previous year. Only 28 percent of EV owners drove out of the dealership the same day in 2024, a net drop versus the 40 percent average in 2023. Generally speaking, owners wait longer for their EVs to be repaired. The table below shows the full scope of the data collected in comparison with the previous year.

Average Duration Of An EV Repair – 2023 Versus 2024

We can clearly see in that table that more owners are waiting an extra day, and, in some cases, up to three days to get their EVs out of the shop. Requests for mobile services have also increased from 14- to 19-percent year-over-year, and owners of electric vehicles went to the dealership more often for the same problem. Interestingly enough, there’s a difference between Tesla and other automakers in that regard, where Tesla owners seem to be making fewer trips to the service department. The data showed that 71 percent of Tesla owners said that their problem was resolved in a single visit, while the number dropped to 65 percent for non-Tesla owners.

But in the non-Tesla realm, it appears multiple visits are more common, as 52 percent of respondents said it took them two visits to resolve a single issue, while 21 percent claimed it took them between four and five visits. As a whole, EV owners also reported that the time required to service their EV was longer than their former gasoline-powered car. Tesla owners claimed it was 23 percent longer, while non-Tesla owners reported a 34-percent increase in wait times.

But if there’s a silver lining to all this collected data, it’s that EV owners, who were polled between December 2024 and January 2025, said servicing their EV still ended up costing less than their ICE-powered car. For non-Tesla owners, 53 percent claimed the latter, compared with 41 percent of Tesla drivers.

The Reason EVs Are Spending More Time At The Repair Shop

I consider myself quite fortunate to have reliable contacts in the dealership world. This allows me to obtain insights into what’s really going on behind closed doors, the service bulletins, the recalls, the back-ordered parts, and the types of complaints consumers come through the door with.

This issue is not unique to a single brand, but it seems to be a tendency in the auto industry in recent years that also doesn’t only affect EVs. As cars become more technologically dense, with a plethora of apps, complicated software, and basically “everything’s computer”, as President Donald Trump so eloquently put it, more fiddling, more updates, and more troubleshooting come with it. Yes, it’s true that over-the-air updates have the potential to prevent unnecessary trips to the service department, but what I’m hearing from the folks working at these service desks is that cars need more software tuning than ever before.

Then there’s the fact that quality in the automotive industry has dropped significantly in recent years. Blame COVID, part shortages, cost-cutting in quality assurance, or all of the above, but cars are simply not built the way they used to be. There’s also the question of training the dealers accordingly to diagnose these new EVs. Some dealers I spoke to mentioned how difficult it was to recruit a new generation of mechanics who have EV knowledge, or who are downright interested in working on these sorts of vehicles. This causes bottlenecks at the dealer level, since a dealer could have, say, only one EV specialist in its repair bay, leading to longer wait times.

In a nutshell, the issues come from more technology-packed cars, more complicated cars, software issues that have not been resolved by the automaker before putting the vehicle on the road, parts that are at times difficult to access, a general drop in the quality of modern automobiles, and a lack of expertise at the dealer level. So, the next time you’re shopping for a new EV, thinking you’ll be seeing your dealer less often, think again. The good news, at least, is that, yes, your new EV will still end up costing you less in the long run.