There is a well-established challenge facing UK automotive retail.

Good Vehicle Technicians are difficult to find.

But a recent development within BYD's UK retailer network raises another question.

Are dealerships only short of Technicians, or are they also losing too much time of the Technicians they already have?

20 minutes looking. Five minutes doing.
BYD has begun rolling out new workshop technology across its UK retailer network following trials with dealerships.

The technology includes AI-assisted technical knowledge searches, remote expert support and digital reporting tools.

And one example from the trial caught our attention.

A Master Technician described needing around 20 minutes to find the instructions required to remove a door panel.

The physical task itself took around five minutes.

Across the wider trial, technical-information searches that could previously take 20–30 minutes were reportedly reduced to seconds or minutes, while report-generation times also fell.

These are trial results reported by the businesses involved rather than independently audited network-wide productivity figures.

But the underlying question is fascinating.

When highly skilled Vehicle Technicians are difficult to recruit, how much of their working day is being consumed by tasks that don't make the best use of those skills?

Perhaps there are two Technician shortages
The automotive industry clearly needs more skilled Technicians.

Recruitment remains difficult across many parts of aftersales, and bringing more people into the profession matters.

But perhaps there are two workshop capacity challenges.

The first is a shortage of people.

The second is a shortage of productive Technician time.

If an experienced Technician spends significant parts of the day searching for information, completing avoidable administration, waiting for specialist support or navigating inefficient systems, simply adding another person doesn't necessarily address the underlying problem.

Equally, better technology doesn't remove the need to recruit.

The more interesting answer may be a combination of both.

Better recruitment. Better retention. Better training. Better technology. Better processes.

Together, they determine how much capability a workshop really has.

Does AI make great Vehicle Technicians less valuable or more valuable?
This is where the conversation becomes particularly interesting.

It's easy to frame AI as technology replacing elements of human work.

But automotive diagnosis isn't simply information retrieval.

Finding a technical bulletin is one thing.

Understanding whether the information is relevant to the vehicle in front of you is another.

Diagnosing an unfamiliar fault, interpreting symptoms, deciding what to investigate next and taking responsibility for a safe repair still require knowledge, experience and judgement.

If technology becomes better at retrieving information and removing administration, perhaps the value of those human capabilities actually increases.

The Vehicle Technician of the future may increasingly need to combine:

• Hands-on technical expertise.
• Strong diagnostic judgement.
• Understanding of increasingly complex electrical and software systems.
• EV and hybrid capability.
• Confidence using digital and AI-supported workshop tools.
• An ability to learn continuously as vehicles evolve.
• The judgement to know when technology is useful and when experience should challenge it.

That is a more interesting skills conversation than simply asking how many years somebody has worked as a Technician.

Could workshop technology become a recruitment and retention issue?
There's another question dealership employers may increasingly need to consider.

Experienced Technicians assess employers just as employers assess Technicians.

• Salary matters.
• Working patterns matter.
• Management matters.
• Training and progression matter.

But could the quality of the technology, information and technical support available to them become increasingly important too?

Imagine two similar opportunities.

One workshop provides modern diagnostic equipment, strong manufacturer training, rapid access to technical information and effective specialist support.

The other expects experienced people to work around outdated or inefficient processes.

Which environment is more attractive to an ambitious Technician?

Technology therefore isn't necessarily separate from the people strategy.

It could become part of it.

What should dealership leaders be asking?
For businesses experiencing persistent Vehicle Technician recruitment problems, the obvious question is:

How do we recruit more Technicians?

That question still matters.

But perhaps it should sit alongside several others.

• Where are our existing Technicians losing time?
• Which tasks genuinely require their expertise?
• Do our systems make their jobs easier or harder?
• Are we investing sufficiently in technical development?
• What capabilities will our workshops need as vehicles continue to change?
• And are we giving good Technicians compelling reasons to stay?

Those questions move the conversation from vacancy filling towards workforce capability.

Recruitment may need to evolve too
This matters to businesses like ours at Pembrook Resourcing.

If the Vehicle Technician role is evolving, the way we recruit Technicians should evolve with it.

Experience and qualifications will remain extremely important.

But increasingly we should also understand how someone approaches diagnosis, learns unfamiliar technology, uses technical information and adapts as vehicles change.

For clients, the recruitment brief may therefore need to become more sophisticated.

Rather than simply asking:

"Can we find another Technician?"
Perhaps the better question is:

"What technical capability does this workshop actually need next?"

The answers won't always be the same.

• Sometimes the business genuinely needs more people.
• Sometimes it needs different expertise.
• Sometimes existing people need better training or support.
• And sometimes technology can remove work that shouldn't be consuming valuable Technician time in the first place.

The strongest aftersales operations will probably combine all of those things.

Pembrook's view
We don't think AI removes the importance of skilled automotive people.

Developments like this may actually make the opposite case.

As technology handles more information and administration, value can shift increasingly towards the things experienced people do particularly well:

Judgement, diagnosis, adaptability, learning and decision-making.

That's why the most interesting question from BYD's workshop technology isn't whether AI can help fix cars.

It's this:

What will a great Vehicle Technician need to be brilliant at five years from now, and are we doing enough today to help them get there?

Whether you're a Technician, Workshop Controller, Service Manager, Aftersales Manager or dealership leader, we'd be genuinely interested in your view.


Source: Motor Trade News, "BYD rolls out Autotech Connect across UK dealer network", 26 October 2026.