7 Used Electric Cars in UK Ranked by MOT Failures (One Fails 3 Times in 10)

Seven popular used electric cars ranked by how often they pass the MOT first time, compared with petrol, diesel and hybrid cars first used in the same year: Jaguar I-Pace, BMW i3, Hyundai Kona Electric, Hyundai Ioniq Electric, Nissan Leaf, Tesla Model 3 and the original Renault Zoe. We took every 2023 MOT test of these cars from the DVSA's own records (about 197,000 tests of electric cars, for comparison) and checked what fails. Example asking prices are from Cazoo listings read on 18 October 2026; they are examples, not the cheapest cars on sale. Prices change; check current listings before you buy. Guide quotes come from What Car, Autocar, Electrifying, DrivingElectric and Fleet News, and the industry report is from the BVRLA and New AutoMotive (September 2026); several of the guides are older, so each is dated in the video. The MOT does not check how healthy a car's battery is, and it does not measure reliability, so this is about what fails the test, not about breakdowns. Chapters 0:00 Seven used electric cars ranked by MOT failures 0:36 7. Jaguar I-Pace 2:17 6. BMW i3 4:08 5. Hyundai Kona Electric 5:43 4. Hyundai Ioniq Electric 7:07 3. Nissan Leaf 9:29 2. Tesla Model 3 11:41 1. Renault Zoe 14:48 What goes wrong on electric cars 16:30 The list again, and what to check before you buy 17:56 Eight more models, and two warnings New videos from the DVSA's MOT data. Subscribe so you don't miss the next one: https://www.youtube.com/@stillpassing... Data: DVSA anonymised MOT tests and results (Great Britain), https://open.data.dvsa.gov.uk/mot-ano... Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Method: 2023 periodic MOT tests (class 4), cars with a recorded mileage, first used 2013 to 2020, vans left out. Electric cars are those recorded with the electric fuel type; the comparison group is all petrol, diesel and hybrid cars first used in the same year (17,483,512 tests). Passed first time means a test result of pass with nothing fixed at the test station, so a car that failed, or had a defect fixed at the station, counts as not passing first time. Failure figures are tests per 100 that failed on the item, or where the defect was fixed at the test station, and are compared with non-electric cars with the same mix of first-use years. The seven are well-known models we picked; eight more electric models with at least 4,000 such tests (Kia Niro, MG ZS, Audi e-tron, Volkswagen ID.3 and e-Golf, Tesla Model S and Model X, Nissan e-NV200) are not ranked, and their gaps are given at the end of the video. The Zoe is the original model first used 2013 to 2019; the 2020 model is recorded under other names and is shown separately. The BMW i3 here is the all-electric car (the range-extender is recorded as a hybrid). Years are first-use years, not build years. This video uses AI-generated narration, imagery and video clips. Check any car's MOT history for free: https://www.gov.uk/check-mot-history Car photos via Wikimedia Commons (62 photos), each credited on screen. Photographers and licences: CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/... Vauxford (32), Calreyn88 (7), Charles01 (3), Philafrenzy (2), Makizox (2), Chris McKenna (Thryduulf), Mtaylor848 CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/... Charles from Port Chester, New York (5), Charlie from United Kingdom (3), Andrew Bone CC BY 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/... Calreyn88 (2), domdomegg CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/... Robert Lamb, Peter Trimming