This past week, we visited the Automechanika trade show in Shanghai. This is the Asia equivalent of North America’s SEMA / AAPEX, focusing on the automotive aftermarket ecosystem, but missing the fun builds and craziness that defines SEMA. The trade show feels more like AAPEX than it does SEMA. 

We went with the goal of seeing what the latest trends are in EV repair, since China has very high penetration of EVs, and also to see if there were any interesting aftermarket diagnostic tools for us to carry. 

First, some comparisons. 

• By the numbers, Automechanika is larger physically, with 4.1mm sqft of exhibition space, versus SEMA / AAPEX being a combined 1.75mm sqft (this excludes probably 3mm sqft of exterior showcases). Automechanika features 6,000 exhibitors while SEMA / AAPEX is a combined 4,500.
• SEMA / AAPEX are only open to industry professionals (with the exception of SEMA being open on Friday) whereas anyone can get a registration at Automechanika.
• Roughly half of Automechanika (the first floor of the two exhibition floors) is more focused on OEM parts, whereas SEMA / AAPEX is much more focused on the aftermarket
• The vendors at Automechanika are, perhaps unsurprisingly, much more skewed to Asia; in contrast, even though SEMA is weighted towards North America, it feels more global with plenty of European and Asian vendors present
• Automechanika hardly features any show cars, or any activations. That makes it feel more like AAPEX

The products we saw on EVs shouldn’t surprise anyone that works on them, except there was a much larger representation of EV tools at the trade show. In fact there was a whole dedicated section on EV and “green technology” (also called New Energy Vehicles — or NEVs). 

On prominent display were EV-enabled scan tools for battery diagnostics which we are familiar with (Autel and Launch for example). But taking up more room were some of the tools related to servicing the actual EV batteries, such as cell balancers (multi module and single module), as well as leakage testers. Whenever the battery casing / housing is opened, tests need to be performed to make sure there is no leakage for safety reasons (i.e. contaminants do not reach live components). Lastly there were plenty of battery discharge units that discharged live batteries to a level that would be safe for transport. These are tools that folks servicing EVs may need one day soon.

On a related note, there were plenty of vendors touting new products related to home and commercial EV charging.

For the vehicle diagnostic side of our business, we saw more proliferation of tools for niche subsegments, like scan tools for commercial vehicles and motorcycles. TPMS was also very well-represented, but nothing new was spotted. 

Even halfway around the world it was great to see some familiar brands and faces:

The last thing about our time in China was just how different the vehicles are. Because of the proliferation of EV OEMs, we spotted tons of brands that we’ve never heard of before. That included this funky design with a bit of a rally flair. 

Automechanika was our first time automotive trade show in Asia and we are happy to report that, from a product and technology perspective, there wasn’t anything that surprised us. 

Have any questions on EV products? Give us a call or email.