Electric Vehicles are Less Likely to be Written Off Than Petrol or Diesel Cars – and they are more reliable than petrol or diesel cars

This was the conclusion of research undertaken by the motor industry experts Cap HPI, which provides data and software for vehicle valuation, validation, collision, mechanical repair, and total cost of ownership.

And it wasn’t even a close contest with petrol and diesel cars written off at more than double the rate of electric vehicles (EVs).

The study, which examined data from 2015 to August 2024, established that 0.9% of EVs under five years old had been written off, compared to 1.89% of petrol and diesel vehicles. A similar gap remains at one year old, where the percentage falls to 0.2% for EVs and 0.4% for ICE.

The finding seriously challenges one of the many misconceptions about electric vehicles.

EVs are Also More Reliable

A separate study conducted by the Centre for Economic Performance at LSE and the University of Birmingham, which analysed nearly 300 million UK Ministry of Transport (MOT) test records detailing the “health” of every vehicle on the United Kingdom’s roads from 2005 to 2022, concluded that EVs are less likely to break down than a petrol or diesel car.

Researchers established that EVs demonstrated the most rapid improvement in reliability, with a 12% lower likelihood of failure for each successive year of production, compared to 6.7% for petrol and 1.9% for diesel vehicles.