UK study of more than 47 million car checks finds EVs hold up better than petrol cars past 120,000 miles

Electric cars are 47% more likely to still be on the road without a major fault than petrol cars once they pass 120,000 miles, according to an analysis of 47.4 million UK vehicle inspections published by the British Vehicle Rental and Leasing Association on September 22, 2026. Battery-electric vehicles failed their annual roadworthiness test at a rate of 16.0% beyond that mileage mark, versus 23.5% for petrol cars and 22.8% for diesels, in a study the trade body commissioned from the research group New AutoMotive.

The analysis draws on MOT test data, the UK’s mandatory annual vehicle inspection, covering a 12-month window and cross-referenced against 863 million historical test records spanning 141.4 million vehicles. That scale lets researchers isolate mileage from age, something used-car buyers and dealers have historically lumped together when judging a vehicle’s condition.

Why failure rates plateau instead of climbing

The BVRLA and New AutoMotive report found that battery-electric failure rates hold steady at roughly 16% once a car passes 60,000 miles, while petrol and diesel failure rates keep climbing toward 23% to 24% as mileage increases. Ben Nelmes, chief executive of New AutoMotive, said separating age from mileage was the key to the finding, describing how, at lower mileages, there is very little difference between petrol and electric cars, but that “beyond around 60,000 miles the failure rate for EVs flattens while the petrol failure rate continues to rise.”

Brakes are a big part of the gap. Electrek’s write-up of the findings notes that battery-electric vehicles showed significantly fewer brake-related failures than petrol cars across the mileage bands studied, a difference researchers attribute to regenerative braking, which uses the electric motor rather than friction pads to slow the car in everyday driving. Less pad wear over 100,000-plus miles means fewer of the brake-related faults that push older petrol cars into MOT failure.

Where EVs still lose: tires and early mileage

The study is not a clean sweep for electric drivetrains. Automotive World’s coverage reports that EVs recorded roughly 1.8 times the rate of tire defects seen in petrol cars, a pattern researchers link to the instant torque and extra weight of battery packs wearing tires faster than a comparable combustion engine does. At the lowest mileage band studied, 20,000 to 40,000 miles, EVs actually failed slightly more often than petrol cars, 12.0% versus 11.7%, before the pattern reverses and holds for every higher band measured.

Toby Poston, chief executive of the BVRLA, cautioned against reading the topline number as a blanket guarantee. In the same press release carrying Nelmes’ comment, Poston said mileage alone should not be the deciding factor for a buyer: a well-maintained, higher-mileage electric car, in his framing, can still be an extremely durable used vehicle, while a neglected one at any mileage carries its own risks. A separate account of the report notes that in head-to-head testing of nine identical vehicle platforms sold with both electric and combustion drivetrains, the electric variant won five comparisons, tied three and lost one.

The Nissan e-NV200 as a real-world test case

Among those twin-platform comparisons, the battery-electric Nissan e-NV200 van stood out. It outperformed its diesel-powered NV200 counterpart on nearly every reliability measure the researchers tracked, with tire wear the sole category where the diesel version came out ahead. For a commercial van, driven on repetitive routes and judged mainly on whether it keeps running rather than on range anxiety, that result speaks to how the durability gap plays out away from private passenger cars, where duty cycles are harder and downtime costs money directly.

What the MOT data cannot show is battery health, which is not part of the UK’s roadworthiness test and would need separate measurement to say how these same vehicles will perform past the mileages already studied. For buyers weighing a used EV against a used petrol car right now, though, the roadworthiness numbers put the two on a clearer footing than the durability debate has generally allowed.

The MOT test itself checks a fixed list of statutory items each year, brakes, suspension, tires, lights, emissions and structural condition among them, and a failure on any one of those counts against the vehicle regardless of what else is fine underneath it. That is why the report’s authors lean on failure rate rather than any single fault type when comparing drivetrains: it captures the sum of everything that can go wrong on a car of a given age and mileage, not just the parts, like brake pads, where an electric motor’s regenerative braking gives it an obvious mechanical advantage.

Longevity data reinforces the failure-rate numbers. Among 15-year-old vehicles, the BVRLA and New AutoMotive report found 94.6% of electric cars still came back for their annual test, compared with 88.1% of petrol cars, implying a road-exit rate of 5.4% for EVs against 11.9% for petrol vehicles, a gap the researchers read as owners scrapping or exporting higher-mileage petrol cars sooner than their electric counterparts. Whether that pattern holds as the current generation of high-mileage EVs continues to age is the question the next round of MOT data will have to answer.

This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.

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