Fleet maintenance times for Chinese cars now “market competitive”
Fleet maintenance times for cars from Chinese manufacturers are now “market competitive”, according to new data released by epyx.
It shows that in 2020, the average vehicle off road (VOR) time for a Chinese car operated by a fleet in the UK was 2.17 days compared to 1.58 for brands from the rest of the world. However, for 2025, these figures were 1.25 and 1.37 respectively.
For lead times – how long fleets have to wait for a maintenance booking – the results for 2020 were 12.29 days for China and 10.85 for the rest of the world. However, these were 15.73 and 14.88 last year.
The data is taken from epyx’s 1link Service Network platform, which supports service, maintenance and repair (SMR) management for 4.9 million UK company cars and vans working with 8,200 garages.
Tim Meadows, CCO, epyx, said: “There is considerable interest among fleets in the many Chinese new entrants into the UK new car market and one of the questions that has been debated is whether they can meet expectations in terms of SMR. This is, of course, a crucial issue for vehicle operators.
“Our data shows that looking back to 2020, fleets would probably have been correct to have some concerns, with China lagging across the key metrics of VOR and lead times. However, they are now in a position where they are a little better than the rest of the world on VOR and a little behind on lead times, but could certainly be described as market competitive.
“The higher profile Chinese manufacturers are investing heavily in creating large UK franchise dealer networks, as well as parts hubs and training centres, and this strategy looks as though it is proving to be effective in SMR terms.”
However, Tim added that data from 1link Service Network suggested Chinese penetration into UK fleets was perhaps happening more slowly than might be expected. While it has risen from 0.72% of new cars added to the platform in 2020 to 4.30% in 2025, this number is lower than both the 4.81% seen in 2024 and 2023’s 4.79%.
“It feels as though Chinese cars have become much more visible on our roads during the last year or so and these figures come as something as a surprise in that respect. It suggests fleets are being relatively circumspect in their adoption of these new options, and much greater volumes are coming from retail sales.
“Similarly, it’s easy to form the impression that many more manufacturers are being added to fleets but our data shows that in 2020, there were 55 brands present on 1link Service Network and in 2025, 56. Of course, some churn has occurred below these headline numbers, but there are a dozen or more new entrants who are not yet represented on the platform.”