After analysing 300m MOT records, researchers reckon electric cars are as reliable as petrol ones

Electric cars last just as long as regular petrol cars, according to clever maths and economics folk from various scholastic institutions.

Researchers from universities across the world analysed around [cue Dr Evil close-up] 300 million MOT records and discovered that yer average electric car lasts for 18.4 years, compared to 18.7 years for a petrol car, and 16.8 years for a diesel car. Interestingly, they discovered Teslas had the longest life among EVs.

Said clever folk hailed from the University of Birmingham, the London School of Economics, the University of California San Diego, and the University of Bern, and sifted through millions of MOTs to figure out how often they failed. Their research was then peer-reviewed and published in the Nature Energy journal.

(Unsure what an MOT is? It's an annual roadworthiness test all UK cars are required to do after the car turns three.)

If you're eyeing the fractional differences in age between the powertrains, it’s worth noting a few key variables in the data. On average, the diesel cars covered 28.8 miles per day, versus the petrol cars’ mileage of 18.2 miles and the EVs’ mileage of 18.9. So the fact most diesels do an extra ten miles a day on average costs a year in longevity – something akin to our one-a-day Greggs pasty habit.

Of course, the study didn’t include any cars that were scrapped, or the 371,300 plug-in hybrids, eliminated on the grounds of, er, being in neither one camp nor the other. It seems other hybrids made the cut though.

Elsewhere, the researchers also found reliability is getting better. When analysing the 416,000 EVs, a figure they called the ‘hazard ratio’ (i.e. how close to old age) dropped considerably in the younger EVs. The researchers put this down to the strides made in technological innovation.

When combining the data of all the powertrains, the average age of a car was 17.8 years, up from 13.9 in 2015. Seems we’re hanging onto our cars for a bit longer, too.