If you have a BYD, Geely, NIO or Li Auto in the bay and no English documentation, you are not imagining the gap. China requires every vehicle manufacturer to publish repair information – but almost none of them publish it in English, and a large share still hide it behind a Chinese-language registration wall. Here is what is actually reachable, based on a direct test of all 22 manufacturer portals registered with China’s national filing platform.
The legal backdrop you can cite
Since the 2015 Measures for the Implementation of Motor Vehicle Repair Technology Information Disclosure, Chinese manufacturers must publish repair technical information through their own websites (or an authorised channel) and then file that disclosure address with the national platform. That is why these portals exist at all, and it is the reason an independent workshop can legitimately request access rather than rely on leaked copies.
What the national platform is – and is not
The filing platform at carti.rioh.cn is commonly mistaken for a manual repository. It is not. It is an administrative register: it records which manufacturers have filed, what disclosure addresses they registered, and how their disclosure is rated. The manuals themselves live on each manufacturer’s own site. Going to the platform expecting PDFs is the single most common dead end in this search.
Tier 1 – free, no registration, downloadable today
| Brand | What is available | Access |
|---|---|---|
| Tesla | Full Service Manual including removal and replace procedures, plus wiring and connector references | Open. No account. This is the single best-documented EV platform available to independents. |
| XPeng | Owner manuals plus Maintenance Manuals across G6, G9, X9, P7, P7+ and L03 | Open download from the brand user-manual portal. |
Tesla is the outlier that matters: a complete service manual, free, in English, covering every published procedure on the platform. If you are building EV capability in a general shop, this is where the training material is.
Tier 2 – free content, but you must create an account
- Toyota (China service portal) – a guest registration unlocks free content including repair manuals and wiring diagrams. The only Japanese brand in this list with a genuinely semi-open door.
- Wuling (SGMW) – repair manuals, circuit manuals, electronic parts catalogues and maintenance schedules behind a registration wall.
- SAIC Hongyan – repair manuals, parts catalogues, special tools and technical bulletins, registration required.
- Great Wall (GWM) – an information disclosure system where parts illustrations and certification data are available at no charge.
- Foton – reading is free but access is granted by email application, which makes it slow rather than expensive.
Tier 3 – paid, price published up front
| Brand / system | Published pricing |
|---|---|
| Changan | Roughly CNY 60 per day, CNY 253 per month, CNY 1500 per year |
| Dongfeng Commercial Vehicle | Full access quoted at CNY 30,000 per year |
| Volkswagen Group (erWin) | Approximately EUR 35 per day, per brand portal |
| Foton (disassembly manuals) | CNY 60 per month, separate from the free reading tier |
| Porsche (TSI) | Paid registration; parts data routes through a separate parts portal |
For a job that needs one Changan procedure, a single day of access is the rational purchase. Buying a month or a year only makes sense if you are running a volume of that brand.
Brands that require a VIN or a vehicle in front of you
- BYD (commercial vehicles) – technical data lookup is gated behind VIN entry, so you need the vehicle or its registration to proceed.
- SAIC Roewe / MG – registration plus binding a vehicle identification number to the account.
Brands with no meaningful repair information portal
A handful of registered manufacturers publish only after-sales policy statements or nothing technical at all. In these cases the practical route is the parts channel or a dealer contact rather than a documentation portal, and it is worth knowing this before you promise a customer a turnaround time.
Practical sequencing for a workshop
- Start with Tesla and XPeng. Free, English, complete. They also build the diagnostic habits that transfer to other platforms.
- Register once with Toyota’s China portal. The effort-to-content ratio is the best in the Japanese group.
- Buy access per job for the paid portals. A one-day Changan purchase beats guesswork on a live vehicle.
- Get the VIN before you start on BYD commercial or MG. Without it you cannot even open the lookup.
- Treat the environment date as important. Chinese portals change access terms, pricing and even domain structure frequently. Everything above reflects a September 2026 test and should be re-checked before you rely on it commercially.
Where our own documentation comes from
The procedures, fault-code explanations and system guides published here are written from officially published manufacturer material, then rewritten for working technicians rather than copied. Where a manufacturer publishes in English, we work from that source; where the material only exists in Chinese, we translate and rewrite it, and we say so on the page. If you need a specific procedure that is not up yet, the fault-code library is the fastest way to find whether we already cover the system you are working on.
Portal addresses, access tiers and pricing verified by direct testing in September 2026. Manufacturers change access terms without notice – confirm current terms with the manufacturer before purchasing access.
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