What about gigacasting?
The Chinese question
There’ s enormous pressure on automakers to use more recyclable materials, which is why so many body panels are now aluminium alloys, a material known for being harder to repair than steel alloys.
Structural repair for aluminium and steel body panels, especially roof pillars, which have become much larger over time due to rollover crash protection regulations, requires different techniques and tools. The fabrication and repair issue here is how different the material properties of aluminium and steel are. That creates a challenge for aftermarket repair workshops, which need to ensure they have the tooling and staff skills to work with both materials.
What about gigacasting?
One of the most promising engineering and assembly solutions for reducing cost and complexity in automotive manufacturing is gigacasting. Tesla has pioneered gigacasting, a technique that uses much larger, more complex castings to create a vehicle with modular assembly.
The advantage of gigacasting is that it dramatically reduces the number of individual parts needed and the assembly complexity of building a new vehicle. But gigacasting has significant disadvantages, most of which concern real-world risks when a gigacast vehicle is involved in a collision.
If a vehicle built with the gigacasting method suffers a light-to-mild collision impact, the entire gigacasting section involved needs replacing. That’ s a significant potential materials loss and a much more complex repair job, compared to a traditional vehicle design, where only the affected components need to be replaced. Instead of an entire gigacast section of the vehicle.
The Chinese question
No vehicles are being sold in South Africa at the moment using gigacasting construction, but the Chinese fleet is growing and will soon make up more than 25 % of the domestic‘ young vehicle’ market under three years of age. More Chinese vehicles mean a higher statistical probability they will be involved in a collision and need repair, which can create issues for local repair workshops.
Some Chinese automakers use different engineering integration when packaging or assembling their vehicles. For a repair industry used to European and Japanese engineering, packaging, and form factors, Chinese design and engineering solutions can look very different. That means established body repair specialists, who have decades of experience working on legacy brands and a near-intuitive understanding of how to disassemble and repair their designs, now need to add a new body of technical knowledge.
Sourcing crash replacement parts is another challenge for repair specialists working on emerging Chinese brands now on sale in South Africa. These crash replacement parts often need to come from China and can be delayed. Compounding the repair complexity is that Chinese technical manuals aren’ t always properly translated or even available for some niche Chinese vehicle brands and models.
OCTOBER 2026 17 WORDS IN ACTION