Analysis of more than 45 million MOT tests has found that electric cars become 25% less likely to fail than petrol equivalents as mileage climbs past 120,000 miles.
Research by New AutoMotive found lower mileage recorded little difference between the two types of vehicle, with only around 0.3% difference – however, this changes significantly past 60,000 miles.
At this point, the MOT failure rate for electric cars levels off at around 16%, while petrol and diesel failure rates continue to increase.
Ben Nelmes, Chief Executive of New AutoMotive, said: “The important thing about this study is that we can separate age from mileage. Looking simply at the headline MOT numbers gives a misleading picture because Britain’s electric cars are much younger than its petrol and diesel fleet, while comparing cars by age alone misses the fact that EVs have typically covered considerably more miles.”
The study did also identify some areas where EVs aren’t as durable as petrol cars.
Across the dataset, EVs recorded around 1.8 times as many tyre defects as petrol cars. Hybrid cars also performed strongly in the analysis and in several categories recorded lower MOT failure rates than either petrol cars or fully electric vehicles.
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