{"id":112,"date":"2020-09-01T02:41:43","date_gmt":"2020-09-01T06:41:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/ee-systems\/?p=112"},"modified":"2026-03-26T13:39:56","modified_gmt":"2026-03-26T17:39:56","slug":"vehicle-maintenance-will-require-advanced-tools-and-training","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/ee-systems\/2020\/09\/01\/vehicle-maintenance-will-require-advanced-tools-and-training\/","title":{"rendered":"Vehicle maintenance will require advanced tools and training"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Automotive industry trends towards electrification and autonomy will have wide-ranging effects in the engineering, manufacturing, and servicing of vehicles. Internal combustion engines will be replaced by electric motors that are relatively less complex and require much less maintenance (figure 1). Vehicle complexity, however, will continue to increase as the electrical and electronic systems within vehicles becomes larger, more sophisticated, and more critical to vehicle functionality. Assisted and automated driving systems, for instance, will use a dense network of sensors and processing units to perceive the driving environment and distribute instructions to vehicle sub-systems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Figure 1: Electric vehicles will come to dominate the market. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Electric and\nautonomous vehicles bring unique and intricate challenges to the service\nenvironment that will require special training or bespoke processes to manage. Service\ntechnicians will need new techniques and expertise to diagnose and repair\nelectric and autonomous vehicles effectively and, most of all, safely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Electric powertrains\nrequire extremely high-voltage wiring to carry power from the batteries to the\nelectric motors and other critical systems. As a result, EVs require additional\nsafety precautions to protect the service technicians performing maintenance.\nVehicle design and workshop procedures both must adapt to meet these heightened\nsafety needs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

EV Service Challenges<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

EV\nmanufacturers have adopted a \u201cSafety by Design\u201d approach by integrating safety mechanisms\ninto the design of the high-voltage wiring and systems. This may be achieved in\nseveral ways, including a high-voltage interlock loop, short circuit\nmonitoring, and potential equalization lines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Workshop\norganization and procedures must also mitigate the potential dangers of\nservicing high-voltage systems. As vehicles come into the workshop, high-voltage\nvehicles need to be separated into dedicated bays for diagnosis and service due\nto the potential dangers of high-voltage wiring or damaged batteries. Technicians\nwill also need special equipment to insulate them from electrical currents or\nprotect them from harmful battery chemicals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ensuring that technicians have appropriate training is equally as important. Training for high-voltage systems in electric vehicles is crucial due to the unique requirements and precautions of these systems in a service environment. A service environment encompasses many different people with different roles that work in and around vehicles under service. Therefore, different levels of training are appropriate for different employees (figure 2).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Figure 2: Various levels of training are necessary for the wide range of employees in a service environment.  This figure shows indicative durations. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Servicing Autonomous Vehicles<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The accurate\nservice and repair of autonomous vehicles will be central to their continued\nsafe and reliable operation. For technicians, it will be imperative to identify\nfaults accurately and prescribe the correct solution. Service documentation and\ntrainings will be indispensable methods of establishing traceability and\nguaranteeing the quality of these repairs and maintenance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The complexity\nof autonomous systems creates a training skills gap between autonomous and\nhuman-driven vehicles. Transitioning service technicians from mechanical to\nelectrical services, or to high-voltage, is just the first step in training the\nautonomous vehicle service workforce. To move to AV service requires a\nnon-linear increase in technician skill. This is because autonomous service technicians\nwill need to inspect and service the network connectivity inside the vehicle.\nImagining the service department of the future, Greg Potter from the Equipment\nand Tool Institute in Michigan says, “The dealership service department will resemble the Genius Bar of an Apple\nstore. Network engineers will work alongside lower-skilled techs who do oil\nchanges and rotate tires.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

New Tools to Enhance Vehicle Service<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

A class of\nnew design tools is focused on reducing the time and resources required to\ncreate technical documentation. Advanced examples, such as Capital Publisher,\nare able to reuse data directly from upstream engineering processes. Engineers\nno longer need to take data from a spreadsheet and manually redraw wiring\ndiagrams. All the necessary data can be imported and automatically laid out\ninto accurate wiring diagrams. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previously,\nthe technical publications department would have manually pulled the needed\ndata together, laid out the schematics, and checked that the wiring data\nmatches the engineering data. Now, engineers can configure the automated\ngeneration of electrical documentation (Figure 5). A configurable engine\nconsumes design data, 3-D models, location views, diagnostic codes, repair\nprocedures, and corporate assets like symbol libraries and graphical styles. Then\nengineers can mine and link adjacent data, re-partition diagrams, re-style\ndocumentation, and even export to multiple formats such as PDF, HTML, and\nS1000D. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The ability\nof modern design tools to automate the creation of technical documentation has\nclear benefits for the technical authoring team such as shorter publication\ncycle times, lower publication creation costs, and fewer publication errors. The\ndocumentation can also be used in house for design reviews and for monitoring\nchanges between harness designs and the service and maintenance technician\nenvironment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maintaining the Future of Transportation<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Smart and\ninteractive service documentation helps to resolve the issues raised by electric\nand autonomous vehicles in the service environment. By directly using the\nharness design data, engineers can be sure that the information in the service\ndocumentation is completely accurate. This is critical with the complexity of\nautonomous vehicle systems and the routing constraints of high-voltage wiring.\nInaccurate wiring diagrams may lead to safety concerns in the service\nenvironment if high-voltage components are not identified properly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The after-sales service and maintenance of vehicles will only become more critical as vehicles become increasingly electrified and autonomous. These vehicle technologies create new challenges and concerns for service technicians as they repair and maintain customers\u2019 vehicles. To learn how advanced electrical systems engineering solutions can help automotive companies equip service technicians with the tools they need to overcome these challenges, please read our whitepaper, The impact of electric and autonomous vehicles on aftersales service and maintenance<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Automotive industry trends towards electrification and autonomy will have wide-ranging effects in the engineering, manufacturing, and servicing of vehicles. Internal…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21646,"featured_media":88,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spanish_translation":"","french_translation":"","german_translation":"","italian_translation":"","polish_translation":"","japanese_translation":"","chinese_translation":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[85],"tags":[122,112,447,446],"industry":[42,43,46,47,45],"product":[176],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-112","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ebook","tag-autonomous-vehicles","tag-electric-vehicles","tag-service-technician","tag-vehicle-maintenance","industry-automotive-transportation","industry-automotive-oems","industry-motorcycles-bicycles-parts","industry-rail-systems","industry-trucks-buses-specialty-vehicles","product-capital"],"featured_image_url":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/24\/2020\/02\/Fig-1-EV-pretty-scaled.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/ee-systems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/ee-systems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/ee-systems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/ee-systems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21646"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/ee-systems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=112"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/ee-systems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":647,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/ee-systems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112\/revisions\/647"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/ee-systems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/88"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/ee-systems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/ee-systems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/ee-systems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=112"},{"taxonomy":"industry","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/ee-systems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/industry?post=112"},{"taxonomy":"product","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/ee-systems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product?post=112"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/ee-systems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}