The 100,000-mile EV panic is dead; check tires and brakes instead

Why do we still treat a used EV with 100,000 miles on the clock like a ticking time bomb? Because that's how we were taught to read odometers on combustion cars. A dataset of 47.4 million inspections suggests that reflex is simply miscalibrated.

The research comes from the group New AutoMotive, commissioned by the UK leasing association BVRLA and published on September 22, 2026. It analyzes 47.4 million MOT tests, the British roadworthiness inspection, and controls for both age and mileage, so it isn't comparing young EVs with old clunkers. At low mileage, EVs and petrol cars fail at nearly the same rate. Past roughly 60,000 miles, the EV failure rate flattens at around 16%, while the petrol rate keeps climbing.

The gap widens exactly where buyers get scared

The numbers are what make this uncomfortable for the old conventional wisdom. As CHIP reports, in the band of roughly 145,000 to 193,000 km, 16.5% of EVs failed versus 22.1% of petrol cars. Above 193,000 km it was 16% versus 23.5%. In other words, the more miles, the better the EV looks by comparison.

The explanation is almost boringly logical. An electric drivetrain has no clutch, no classic manual gearbox and no exhaust. Fewer parts that wear means fewer things to fail. Ben Nelmes, head of New AutoMotive, said high mileage is not the indicator of poor condition that buyers have assumed. We'd go further: for road safety, the odometer now says less about an EV than about a petrol car.

There's another detail we like. At age 15, 94.6% of EVs came back for another MOT within 30 months, against 88.1% of petrol cars. If EVs were quietly dying young, we'd expect it to be the other way around.

The two weak spots are real, and easy to inspect

This isn't an advertisement. EVs showed about 1.8 times the tire defect rate of petrol cars. The researchers point to weight and torque, and the problem is worst on older EVs built on combustion platforms. Brakes are the second catch: high-mileage EVs have fewer brake defects thanks to regenerative braking, but older, low-mileage EVs showed more, because rarely used brakes can corrode.

Notice what that means. Both weaknesses are things a buyer can look at before signing. Check the tire wear pattern, ask for the brake history and, as Germany's TÜV-Verband advises in its 2026 report, brake firmly now and then. In our view, the odder buy is the older EV that barely moved and whose brakes sat idle, not the well-driven one.

The battery is the blind spot nobody should ignore

Here is where we stop cheering. The MOT doesn't test battery health. An EV can pass every inspection and still have lost meaningful range. BVRLA chief Toby Poston was explicit that the study is no argument for buying without checking: buyers should scrutinize history, condition, tires and the battery as closely as they would an engine and service record on a petrol car.

It's also worth noting a limit on how far to generalize. The data is British, and as one analysis points out, EU member states don't publish inspection results in a comparable open form, so the same exercise can't easily be repeated for Germany or France. And model differences matter: Germany's TÜV report ranked a Tesla Model Y last among 110 vehicles aged two to three years, with a 17.3% defect rate, so averages can hide plenty of spread. The study itself doesn't break results down by model.

Our verdict

Stop using mileage as a veto on used EVs. Use it as a prompt to ask better questions: what is the battery's state of health, what do the tires look like, how were the brakes used? A used EV with 100,000 miles and a documented battery report is, on this evidence, a safer bet than its reputation suggests. Dealers who discount high-mileage EVs out of habit may be handing buyers a bargain. Just don't skip the battery check, because that's the one thing this dataset can't tell you.