Matthew Lynn’s latest column in Telegraph has flagged up a WhatCar? survey that reveals EVs are the most likely to leave you stranded by the roadside. He summarises the survey’s main findings:
Exclusive What Car? research shows that electric vehicles (EVs) suffer more breakdowns than diesel, hybrid or petrol models, and that EVs are the least likely to be fixed at the roadside.
What Car? asked 29,967 car owners about their breakdown experiences over the past two years as part of the most recent What Car? Reliability Survey, conducted in association with MotorEasy.
Overall, 11% of survey participants said their car had broken down in the past two years, but the breakdown rate for EV owners was 16.8%, the highest of all fuel types. In contrast, 10.7% of petrol-powered cars needed to be recovered, 14% of hybrids broke down and 15% of diesel vehicles.
Lynn is excoriating in his judgement of EVs:
They will save the planet, they are quieter, they will rebuild local industries, and they even come with attractive tax breaks. Rewind a couple of years, and there were plenty of reasons for buying a shiny new Tesla or Polestar electric vehicle instead of an old-fashioned, high-pollution, petrol or diesel car.
And yet, one by one, all those arguments have been punctured. They won’t help the environment as much as we think, they are mostly made in China, the tax breaks are gone, and now we learn that they are more likely to break down as well.
Along with higher insurance costs, EVs are rapidly being exposed as the expensive choice:
The faults on EV’s were less likely to be something that could be fixed on the side of the road by an emergency repair service, meaning that motorists were less likely to be able to complete their journey, and might have to pay for an expensive towing service as well.
And of course, if something does go wrong it will probably cost more to fix, with surveys suggesting that EVs cost 30% to 50% more to repair than petrol cars, while replacing the tyres if you get a puncture will be pricey as well, with each one, according to one survey, costing £77 more on average than traditional vehicles.
Hellbound and Down 