With increasing global preference for electric vehicles, worldwide consumers are switching to EVs. To fulfill their demands, several OEMs have also entered the competition with their own electric vehicles. Then come leading players like Tesla, BYD, Polestar, BMW, Hyundai, and Volkswagen, who are already dominating the market. However, the aftermarket sales and support scenario of EVs is still not that efficient. Forget tackling range anxiety and establishing an EV charging network. Being an OEM, you understand the importance of standardizing after-sales support across your multiple dealerships. It might be difficult to do so with a regular parts catalog system that is optimized for ICE vehicles. Let’s take a closer look at how spare parts catalog management differs for EVs from ICE vehicles, and the type of cataloging system EV manufacturers need.
Electric vehicle OEMs work with high-voltage components, ranging from 400V to 800V. These components, including but not limited to battery packs, DC converters, inverters, onboard charges, etc., are very critical. Where selecting the wrong spare part in an ICE can lead to customer frustrations, inconvenience, and delayed repairs, a single mistake in identifying a high-voltage component can lead to serious issues, including technician safety risks, thermal runaways, fire hazards, part failure, and non-compliance. Thus, EV OEMs cannot work on guesswork. Part identification in EVs is an error-free zone where a single mistake can lead to serious consequences.
EV OEMs are concentrating on Software Defined Vehicles (SDV), which, instead of mechanical parts, rely on software configuration to introduce new features in the vehicle, control new functionalities, track performance, and send Over-the-Counter (OTC) updates. The problem is that these software versions and firmware updates don’t have any part number, making them impossible to handle through regular parts catalog software designed for ICE vehicles. A few use cases of after-sales servicing in SDVs that regular software parts catalog cannot handle are:
To help workshops deal with such use cases, EV OEMs need to deploy a cataloging solution that can control software and firmware versions, track update history, save software configurations, and help identify real-time compatibility issues. This can also be achieved with the help of AI-enabled tech that can help OEMs extract the relevant software information.
Battery warranty coverage terms of an EV vastly differ from ICE vehicles. For example, they cannot be easily replaced. Instead, technicians try to figure out the problem in battery cells and repair only that part. As EV batteries are modular, they can have several components, including cells, modules, and smaller battery packs that are also serialized at multiple levels and connected to a single BMS. Finding a faulty cell in such complex battery infrastructure brings new challenges for technicians. Also, along with tracking the serial numbers of every battery component, technicians need to distinguish new batteries from repaired, refurbished, and recycled batteries to find timely resolutions for the problem and reduce vehicle downtime. They also need to track metrics like State of Charge (SOC) and State of Health (SOH) in EVs. One way to ensure that technicians don’t face trouble when working with different EV battery packs, especially in large vehicles like trucks, is 3D exploration. However, the 3D exploration capabilities of modern software also differ vastly.
Only a few people holding technical expertise in the dealership create dependency on that person. When the technician leaves, dealers face a slump in providing fast and quality servicing. This problem is far more aggravated in EVs. The EV technology in itself is evolving, with new advances every quarter and OEMs frequently pushing out new features. In such a scenario, it becomes difficult for the OEM to generalize knowledge across all its technicians, leaving only a few technicians holding essential information. This kind of dependency is often harmful for the OEM in the long run. It increases retention costs and leads to low-quality service and repair delays in the absence of technicians. To deal with such a situation, OEMs need to ensure that only person does not hold the entire technical know-how. Instead, the information should be available on a centralized system and be easily accessible by all technicians.
EV manufacturers are subject to numerous norms and regulations that apply on both a global and domestic level. With each country having varying regulations, it becomes difficult for OEMs to ensure statutory compliance. For example, the US government mandates an 8-year or 100,000-mile warranty on EV batteries. Likewise, other governments have strict regulations on reducing carbon footprints, material composition, and using recycled parts. Regular parts catalog software does not equip you with the right technology to ensure that repairs meet statutory compliance. Even if the OEM strategizes to standardize EV manufacturing across global chains, the compliance requires them to prepare and work with multiple Bill of Materials (BOMs). OEMs need to ensure that their catalog and spare part distribution meet the BOMs.
Intelli Catalog is an industry-leading spare parts catalog software, purpose-built with advanced features to help OEMs streamline their cataloging, parts distribution, and global scalability operations. For EV manufacturers, Intelli Catalog has numerous AI-enabled and user-centric features to overcome the aforementioned problems.
For fast and accurate part identification in EVs, technicians can rely on Intelli Catalog’s AI-Fast Search features. They can converse with the cataloging system using voice search in their natural language and get a quick response to all types of queries. These queries can include:
As said above, EV manufacturers are working on Software Defined Vehicles (SDV), which rely heavily on software configurations. However, these configurations and software firmware versions usually don’t have a part number. In such situations, Intelli Catalog’s multiple search options can help. Dealerships and technicians can find applicable software and configurations via Vehicle Identification Number (VIN), model number, variant, and even through figure search.
EV battery packs are undoubtedly complex. With so many battery cells, modules, sub-packs, and data such as serial number and refurbished/recycled part info involved, it can become difficult to identify replacement parts and proceed with repairs. Hopefully, Intelli Catalog supports 3D parts cataloging, allowing technicians to drill down into 3D figures of battery packs, do part highlighting via serial numbers, and even pan, zoom, and rotate figures to match the right parts in the catalog.
With varying government norms and regulations in every country, it can be difficult to ensure catalog management as per the varying BOMs of the region. EV manufacturers using Intelli Catalog do not need to worry about this problem. Not only does Intelli Catalog come with BOM management, but it also has extended capabilities like geo-specific spare part pricing and multi-lingual catalog management, ensuring that EV manufacturers do not face problems even when conducting global or cross-border operations.
The speed at which the EV industry is evolving, obsolete part information becomes even more difficult to supersede. Intelli Catalog streamlines part supersession by supporting version update history and instant rollouts. Technicians can find both updated information on their digital parts catalog and look at the version history. In case they need to repair an old model, the complete part history will be available on the system.
Another advanced AI-based feature that Intelli Catalog brings to OEMs is Intelli GPT. With the help of this module, OEMs can chat with the system and extract all essential insights. They can visualize the data in various charts and graphs. Whether the information is related to spare parts, software versions, inventory levels, sales orders, etc., if it is available in the system, Intelli GPT will provide it in a fast and organized manner. Some queries that OEMs can ask Intelli GPT are:
The world is moving towards sustainable fuels, and EV is just the beginning of them. EV technology is already complex, and while OEMs are trying their best to provide advanced technologies to consumers, such technology comes with various after-sales service challenges. While OEMs can rely on regular non-AI-powered cataloging systems to streamline their sales, those moving forward with advanced AI tech will see a concrete difference in catalog management and distribution costs, repair times, and customer satisfaction.
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