Do electric cars last longer than gasoline cars? This major study provides an answer.

Is a high mileage really a problem when buying a used electric car? A large British study based on 47.4 million vehicle inspections provides some reassuring findings. After a certain mileage, electric models fail inspection significantly less often than their gasoline counterparts.

Seeing 150,000 or 200,000 kilometers displayed on a used car’s odometer can be alarming… And perhaps even more so for electric cars, given the ongoing concern about the battery. Yet a British study challenges the idea that high mileage necessarily means a car is nearing the end of its life.

The gap widens after 100,000 kilometers

Commissioned by the British Vehicle Rental and Leasing Association (BVRLA) and conducted by New AutoMotive, this study relied on the analysis of 47.4 million British vehicle inspection (MOT) records—nothing short of that! The researchers made sure to compare vehicles with similar ages and mileage.

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At low mileage, gasoline and electric vehicles are practically on par. Between 32,000 and 64,000 kilometers, 12% of electric vehicles fail the inspection, compared to 11.7% of gasoline cars. But starting at 96,000 kilometers, the gap begins to widen. The failure rate for electric vehicles stabilizes around 16%, while that for gasoline cars continues to rise.

The findings become particularly interesting between 145,000 and 193,000 kilometers. For cars aged three to eight years, 16.5% of electric vehicles fail the MOT test, compared to 22.1% of gasoline vehicles. Thus, electric vehicles have about a 25% lower risk of failing the test. Beyond 193,000 kilometers, the gap widens further to 16% versus 23.5%

More stress on tires

Electric vehicles have approximately 1.8 times more tire-related defects. However, researchers did not observe more suspension problems due to their greater weight. At high mileage, braking defects are also fewer, likely thanks to the use of regenerative braking.

Another interesting fact: electric vehicles do not seem to disappear from the roads prematurely. At 15 years old, 94.6% of the electric vehicles studied returned for a MOT within 30 months after the previous one, compared to 88.1% of gasoline vehicles. This does not necessarily mean that all the others were scrapped. Exports or administrative decommissioning could also explain their disappearance from traffic records, but still.

What about the battery in all this?

This is obviously the major limitation of this study. The British MOT, like our vehicle inspection, does not measure the battery’s health status (SoH), its capacity loss, or its charging performance. Therefore, the analysis primarily provides information on the mechanical durability and the vehicles’ ability to remain roadworthy.

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All these millions of technical inspections still provide an additional argument against automatically considering high mileage as a dealbreaker in the used electric vehicle market.