Electric vehicles (EVs) remain a controversial topic, particularly in countries such as South Africa where longer driving distances, electricity shortages and high import taxes for these vehicles continue to discourage mass adoption.

It’s a different story in Europe, however, with the industry facing an EV mandate, and consequent sales ban for new internal combustion vehicles, from 2035.

Given the growing popularity of EVs, the German Automobile Club (ADAC) now has sufficient data to assess the reliability of battery cars in relation to their petrol and diesel counterparts.

The ADAC operates a popular breakdown service in that country, and drawing data from over 3.6 million callouts in 2024, it has now determined that electric cars are significantly more reliable than internal combustion (ICE) models, at least during the first few years of ownership.

ADAC’s data shows that among vehicles that are two to four years old, ICE vehicles were two and a half times more likely to break down than EVs, with 9.4 breakdowns per 1,000 vehicles versus 3.8.

The vehicles with the highest number of breakdowns were the Toyota C-HR, at 63.1 breakdowns per 1,000, and the Yaris Cross, at 40. However, it appears most of these were caused by battery problems, something Toyota has apparently fixed.

The most reliable vehicles overall were the combustion engined Minis and Audi A4, both with scores of below 0.5, while the Tesla Model 3 (0.5) also scored admirably.

It’s worth keeping in mind that starter batteries were the main cause of breakdowns as far as the ADAC statistics go, accounting for 44.9% of callouts in 2024. Thus, the study is not necessarily an indicator of overall reliability of vehicles.

It also remains to be seen whether electric vehicles will provide more problems for owners as their batteries age.

On the other hand, it makes sense that EVs would be more reliable than ICE vehicles, due to the fact that their motors are significantly simpler and there are far fewer moving parts and ultimately much less that can go wrong, at least from a mechanical perspective.

IOL