High mileage can make used-car buyers nervous, and that concern grows even greater when the vehicle in question is electric. A new UK study, however, suggests EVs may actually hold up better than gasoline cars as the miles pile on.
The research analyzed a massive 47.4 million MOT tests and found little difference between EVs and gasoline cars at lower mileages. Once vehicles pass roughly 60,000 miles, though, their failure rates begin moving in different directions.
Among three- to eight-year-old cars with 90,000 to 120,000 miles, 16.5% of EVs failed their MOT compared with 22.2% of gasoline cars. Above 120,000 miles, the respective failure rates were approximately 16% and 23.5%.
FleetNews reports that the study was conducted by New AutoMotive and commissioned by the British Vehicle Rental and Leasing Association (BVRLA). Those numbers sound encouraging for anyone shopping for a high-mileage EV, but there’s a significant limitation to what they actually tell us.
An MOT Isn’t A Complete Reliability Test
Britain’s MOT inspection focuses on whether a vehicle meets minimum roadworthiness and safety standards. It examines components including brakes, tires, suspension, steering, lights, and the vehicle’s structure.
What it doesn’t measure is an EV battery’s state of health, remaining capacity, electrochemical degradation, or charging performance. That’s a particularly important omission when evaluating an older, high-mileage electric car.
The same caveat applies to combustion cars in a different way. An MOT isn’t a comprehensive assessment of engine or transmission health either, meaning the study shouldn’t be interpreted as proof that EV powertrains are universally more reliable than gasoline engines.
The researchers themselves stress that the study isn’t intended to establish one powertrain as inherently more reliable than another.
EVs Weren’t Better At Everything
Electric cars also had their weak points. Across the dataset, EVs recorded approximately 1.8 times as many tire defects as gasoline cars, with the problem particularly noticeable among some earlier EVs adapted from combustion-engine platforms.
Suspension told a different story. Between 60,000 and 90,000 miles, EVs recorded 4.7 suspension defects per 100 tests compared with 6.1 for gasoline cars.
Brakes were similarly complicated. High-mileage EVs experienced fewer brake defects, while older EVs with relatively low mileage showed increased friction-brake problems, which researchers linked to corrosion from those components being used less frequently because of regenerative braking.
High Mileage Doesn’t Automatically Mean Worn Out
The findings nevertheless challenge the assumption that an EV with 80,000 or 100,000 miles should automatically be avoided. Once age and mileage were accounted for, the study found EV MOT failure rates leveling off while gasoline-car failure rates continued climbing.
Researchers also found no evidence that older EVs were simply surviving because they had become low-mileage second cars. EVs recorded higher median annual mileage than gasoline cars at every age examined between four and 16 years.
If you’re shopping for a used EV, the takeaway isn’t that mileage suddenly doesn’t matter. Condition, maintenance history, tires, and especially battery health still deserve close scrutiny.
Those 47.4 million MOT results tell us plenty about how high-mileage EVs are holding up mechanically. They just can’t tell you how healthy the most expensive component in the car actually is.