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Electric cars fail their MOT on tyres twice as often as petrol cars
We matched 442,243 first-time inspections of electric cars against petrol and diesel cars of the same age. Tyres are 47.5% of everything that fails an electric car, against 23.7% on the rest of the fleet. Brakes go the other way.
The Nissan Leaf is better than petrol at three years old and worse than diesel at ten
49,764 inspections in a single year make the Leaf the best-documented electric car in Britain. It starts strong, then ages faster than the fleet, and the reason is suspension and rear brakes rather than anything electric.
DVSA has published the 2025 test year. Here is what will change on this site
The 2025 files landed on 22 June 2026 with 38.1 million tests and 92.5 million defect items. Every figure here will be recomputed; this is what to expect and what will not move.
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Where the numbers come from
Every story above is computed from the same inspection records. These are the pages that hold the full tables.
Tyres49.8% of electric failures
Suspension joints and bushes12.8% of electric failures
Wipers and washers11.4% of electric failures
Lights and electrical10.7% of electric failures
Brakes8.9% of electric failures
Steering1.5% of electric failures
Body and structure1.4% of electric failures
Every model ranked81 models by failure rate