Do electric cars or combustion engines break down more often? And: Which drive means you have to go to the workshop more often? A new study provides answers to these questions.
Electric cars are currently in crisis in Germany: new registrations of electric cars are declining - most recently in March. There are many reasons for the reluctance to buy: Many people are put off by the high prices for electric vehicles after the funding bonuses in the form of the environmental bonus were surprisingly canceled in December 2023. The high loss in value of used electric vehicles also does not have a positive effect on sales figures. And many potential customers still struggle with supposedly too short ranges - although a recent study showed that a relatively small battery would actually be sufficient for most electric car customers. But what about the reliability of electric cars? And how often do they have to go to the workshop?
Electric cars: According to the study, more recalls and more technical defects than with combustion engines
Fewer breakdowns, but more and often longer visits to the workshop: the repair needs of electric cars and conventional cars differ significantly, as an owner survey by market observers from
Uscale
has now shown. Accordingly, the reliability of electric cars in everyday life is quite high: Only 11 percent of electric car drivers required breakdown service in the past twelve months, while the rate for combustion engine users was 19 percent. However, electric vehicles had to go to the workshop more often during the same period: 24 percent of survey participants had technical defects in the car, and 19 percent had a manufacturer's recall as the reason for the trip to the service. The comparative data for the combustion engine was significantly lower at 9 and 5 percent respectively.
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Differences between brands: Which electric cars had to go to the workshop particularly often
However, there are big differences between electric car manufacturers when it comes to the frequency of workshop visits. Technical defects had to be repaired particularly often in vehicles from Skoda, Audi and Opel, with around one in three cars causing problems. Vehicles from Mercedes (13 percent), BMW (7 percent) and Nissan (6 percent) performed significantly better.
According to the study, electric car repairs often take longer than initially assumed
Not only can the frequency of visits to the workshop be annoying for electric cars, but the average repair time is also longer than the customer expects. 19 percent of the work took longer than initially expected. For the combustion engine, this value is only 6 percent. In the study, around 2,200 electric car drivers and 400 diesel or gasoline engine users in Germany, Austria and Switzerland were surveyed. The vehicle age was on average three years.
The main problem is the high accident repair costs of electric cars - they are on average a third more expensive than combustion engines. However, drivers of combustion engines will soon have to expect higher vehicle insurance premiums again, because repair costs in workshops are generally rising due to the increasingly complex technology in cars.
(With material from SP-X)