Audi Q8 — MOT statistics 2024

The Audi Q8 failed 8.94% of 4,285 first MOT attempts in 2024 ("first-time", excluding retests). Adjusted for the age of the fleet, its initial-failure ratio is 62.4 (100 = expected for its age profile). This car fails its MOT about 38% less often than expected for its age. Small sample — treat with care.

Age-adjusted peer: Audi Q2 (index 62.4) — the two published results are 0.0 index points apart.

Audi Q8 common problems: what actually fails the MOT

Lamps, reflectors and electrical equipment are well below the reference at 0.8 per 100 tests, against 2.6 per 100 tests across UK vehicles of the same ages.

higher bar = fails more oftenrate per 100 tests

family vs national — matched to UK vehicles of the same ages — top component groups, per 100 tests. Legend: This family · National avg. Combined labels: family / national average. A gap here reflects how these vehicles are driven, used and maintained as well as how they were built — an MOT defect is a test outcome, not a breakdown.

Named defects ranked by how much more often they appear than the national average — not by raw rate.

Audi Q8 MOT advisories: what gets flagged

Tyres are highest at 33.2 per 100 tests; Identification is lowest at 1.0 per 100 tests — the gap is 32.2 per 100 tests.

higher bar = flagged more oftenadvisory items per 100 initial tests

Advisories are wear the tester noted but didn't fail — what will need money soon.

Tyres, brakes and suspension: Audi Q8 against cars of the same age

Failing items per 100 initial tests, 2019-2024. The comparison group is every petrol or diesel car tested at the same age, so weight and drivetrain show up rather than fleet age.

If a car like this fails, does it fail again?

A failure rate does not say whether a failure is a one-off or the start of something. This follows the same vehicles into their next ordinary MOT a year later — retests after a repair are excluded, because they follow a failure by definition. 2019-2024.

A failed test does not clearly change next year's odds here (8.5% against 8.8%): the difference is within the margin of error. Some of this is the vehicle and some is the owner: a car that was let go once tends to be let go again. One caveat: a car that fails may be sold or scrapped rather than tested again, so these figures describe the vehicles that came back.

Adjusted for how much these are actually driven

The headline index adjusts for the fleet's age. Wear, though, follows mileage: a three-year-old taxi and a three-year-old garage queen sit in the same age band. These two rows compare every car with vehicles of the same age, and then with vehicles of the same age and the same annual mileage, 2019-2024, on 10,690 tests. Both stand on the six-year corpus so they are measured on identical data — compare them with each other, not with the headline index above, which is measured on 2024 alone.

Mileage matters here: matching on how much these are driven moves the figure by 5.5 points — this fleet works harder than the vehicles it is measured against, so the age-only view penalises it — but it does not change which side of normal the car sits on. One limit to keep in mind: mileage is partly a result of how often a car breaks down — one that spends weeks in the workshop covers fewer miles — so the mileage-matched figure can understate a real weakness. Tests with no usable odometer reading are left out of it.

How the Audi Q8 compares with cars of its own age and size

Not against the whole fleet — against cars of the same size class tested at the same age, 2019-2024.

Raw first-time failure rates within each age, so fleet age cannot flatter either side. A positive difference means this model fails more often than its own class at that age.

How does the Audi Q8 perform as it gets older?

The Q8 at age 6 is well below the reference at 7.7%, against 17.5% for all vehicles of the same age.

higher = larger sharecompare shares in percentage points

Chart axes: car age, years · failure-rate scale 0–22%.

Takeaway: solid line: this family; dashed: all cars.

How dangerous are Audi Q8 MOT failures?

Major defects are well below the reference at 8.4 per 100 tests, against 52.8 per 100 tests nationally.

higher bar = fails more oftenrate per 100 tests

Chart values: Minor 3.3 · Major 8.4 · Dangerous 4.3.

Per 100 tests on this family. National average: Minor 14.2 · Major 52.8 · Dangerous 11.2 per 100.

Does the month of an Audi Q8 MOT matter?

Nov is highest at 10.4%; Sep is lowest at 8.1% — the gap is 2.3 percentage points.

higher = larger sharecompare shares in percentage points

Chart scale: 7%–33%.

bars: Audi Q8 · dashed: all class-4 cars

Takeaway: the spread between best and worst month is 2.3 percentage points — booking month barely matters for this family. Seasonality partly reflects registration-date clustering, not weather.

Before reading the shape: most of it is not about cars. Britain changes its registration plates twice a year, and 18.9% of these cars were first registered in March with another17.1% in September — 36% in two months against the 17% an even spread would give. An MOT falls due three years after first registration, so the buying calendar becomes the testing calendar. That shapes how many cars are tested each month — not how often they fail: the busiest months here are not the worst ones, so read the failure line on its own and the volume behind it separately.

Audi Q8 average mileage by age

At age 5, the middle half of Q8s runs from 36,048 miles to 58,532 miles, against 46,288 miles as the median.

further right = more milesmedian is the typical car; band is p25–p75

Chart axes: car age, years · odometer scale 0–68k mi.

Does high mileage mean more Audi Q8 MOT failures at the same age?

Within the same age group, split by odometer (2024 MOTs), so this separates wear from age: at ages 3–5, 7.9% of those with under 40,000 miles failed first time versus 10.3% of those with 70,000–100,000 miles.No clear mileage gap inside this age group, among cars still being tested.

line: median · band: middle half of the fleet (p25–p75)

A typical 5-year-old Q8 has ~46,288 miles on the clock. Much more — ask why; much less — check for gaps in the MOT history.

Where in Britain the Audi Q8 fails its MOT most

Croydon area is highest at 15.7%; London NW area is lowest at 2.5% — the gap is 13.2 percentage points.

higher = larger sharecompare shares in percentage points

Toughest areas	% failing	vs model overall
Croydon (CR)	15.74%	+6.8 pp
Aberdeen (AB)	15.53%	+6.5 pp
Leicester (LE)	14.75%	+5.8 pp
Reading (RG)	14.66%	+5.7 pp
Watford (WD)	14.55%	+5.6 pp

Easiest areas	% failing	vs model overall
London NW (NW)	2.53%	-6.5 pp
Blackburn (BB)	2.73%	-6.3 pp
London E (E)	4.98%	-4.0 pp

Every dot is a postcode area — size = how many were tested there, colour = share failing. These figures are not age-adjusted: coastal and rural areas often run older fleets and salted roads, so higher raw fail rates do not automatically mean a worse local stock of this model.

Map labels: Scotland · N. England · Wales · London · S. West. Colour scale: 5%–15% failing.

Audi Q8 survival: which cars are still on the road

By age 6 is well below the reference at 29.7%, against 100.0% at the ages 4–6 reference level.

higher = larger sharecompare shares in percentage points

Chart axes: car age, years · survival vs ages 4–6 · scale 0–105%.

By age 6, only about 30% as many cars of this family present for MOT as at ages 4–6 (reference n≈2,052); survivors still fail at 7.7% vs 9.0% at age 4. Older cars that still appear are a selected subset — weaker ones have already left.

How many years is an Audi Q8 likely to last?

Bought at age 5 stands out at 0.8 years.

bigger number = longer remaining lifeyears on the observed survival curve

estimateObserved only until age 6. The curve does not run five years past the stated age with the share still tested under 50%, so no 'years left' number is given.

Audi Q8 faults that come together

Brakes + Tyres stand out at 5.30×, against 1.00× if the faults were independent.

above 1.0× = more than expectedbelow 1.0× = less

Defects in «Brakes» and «Tyres» appear together 5.30× more often than chance (23 co-occurrences in the same test; 55 pairs compared).

Lift = how many times more often both groups appear on the same test than if independent. A pair is listed from 5 tests with both faults; the lift is shown from 20, and called above chance only when its 95% interval excludes 1 (see rough estimates).

Is low mileage better for an Audi Q8?

Cars driven under 5,000 miles a year is well below the reference at 8.6%, against 10.6% for cars driven 8,000–12,000 miles a year.

higher = larger sharecompare shares in percentage points

At matched ages 5–14, cars averaging under 5k miles/year fail at 8.6% vs 10.6% for 8–12k miles/year — 2.0 pp, interval includes no difference (n_low=221, n_normal=1,231). The gap interval includes no difference, so no higher/lower claim is made. Diesel alone: 8.0% low-use vs 10.4% normal (-2.5 pp).

Audi Q8 MOT repair costs

The MOT-failure repair budget per test runs from £11.26 to £21.39, against £54.85 for the test itself.

bigger number = costs morepounds per test, MOT-failing faults only

Multiply how often each component fails on this model by what that repair usually costs, and you get the amount an owner should expect to budget per test for MOT-failing faults only — roughly £11 to £21, on top of the test fee itself. It is a budgeting figure, not a quote: the spread between a set of pads and a set of discs is most of the range.

Prices are modal quotes from a hand-kept catalogue of published UK garage guides — we do not scrape the booking sites, their terms forbid it, so this list is short and updated by hand with a source and date against each line. Each line prices one typical repair in that group, not a full remedy, and only groups our catalogue actually covers are counted. The contrast worth noticing is the second card: the legal maximum for the test has been £54.85 since 2010, while the repairs it uncovers have followed inflation the whole time.

For scale from a different direction: Warrantywise, which sees used-car warranty claims rather than test failures, puts the average claim at £2,052 across the ten highest-claim models it ranks and £539 for Honda, the lowest-claim make in its index (Warrantywise index 2026, 1.6 million claims, cars aged 3–15). Those sit an order of magnitude above the figures in this table, and the gap is the point: a warranty claim is a gearbox or an engine, which almost never fails an MOT, while the faults that do fail one are corrosion, lamps and tyres, which no warranty pays for. The two numbers answer different questions and neither replaces the other.

Audi Q8 running costs for a fleet

Vehicles failing at age 6 are well below the reference at 8.0%, against 10.0% at age 5, tested in the same year.

higher = larger sharecompare shares in percentage points

No single year stands out as the point where this model starts costing more: the year-to-year steps in its failure rate are too small or rest on too few tests to name one (D1 rule: a step is named only with at least 2,000 tests on both sides and a jump above 3 percentage points).

Repair spend uses the same modal prices as the section above, so it inherits the same limits: one typical repair per component group, not a full remedy. Downtime is the gap between the failed test and the passed re-test, which is the window a vehicle is legally off the road.

Audi Q8 rust problems: where they corrode

Salt-belt exposure is well below the reference at 37th percentile, against 50th percentile as the middle of published models.

higher = larger sharecompare shares in percentage points

This Audi Q8 has too few tests to judge for corrosion once age is held constant, and its owners live in areas that are about typical for the models we publish.

Corrosion is the one failure mode that is as much about geography as about the car. We keep the two apart on purpose: a model can look rusty simply because it is popular in Scotland, and a model can look clean simply because it is bought in Surrey. Blending them into a single score would hide which of the two is doing the work.

Exposure is this model's tests weighted by an area corrosion index built from frost days, salt load and distance to the coast — the composite validated at r = 0.42 against corrosion defects we actually record. It is published as a rank, not a raw score, because every mainstream model skews towards low-corrosion areas for the simple reason that most of Britain's cars are in the south. Susceptibility is standardised to the national age profile, so an old fleet does not get labelled a rusty model.

Does an Audi Q8 advisory become a failure?

Tyres are highest at 5.5%; Brakes are lowest at 2.3% — the gap is 3.3 percentage points.

higher = more likelypercentage is the observed transition probability

This is the question an advisory note actually raises, and it needs six years of test history to answer. We followed the same vehicles from one MOT to the next across 2019–2024 and measured how often a component that was merely advised came back as a genuine failure at the next test.

Read it as a budgeting horizon, not a prophecy: the most likely component above turns into a failure for about 6 in 100 cars, and the median gap is 12 months and roughly 9,924 miles. The rest were repaired, sold, scrapped, or simply held. Rows with fewer than 500 tracked advisories are not shown.

What will fail next on an Audi Q8?

Visibility after a failure at age <3 is highest at 7.2%; Noise, emissions and leaks after a passed at age <3 are lowest at 0.7% — the gap is 6.5 percentage points.

higher = more likelypercentage is the observed transition probability

The same chains, cut differently: given a car's age and how its last test went, which component most often causes trouble at the following one.

The pattern that repeats across every family: a failure at one test roughly doubles the chance of a failure on the same component at the next one, and an advisory sits about half-way between a clean pass and a failure. Age bands in years; probabilities are per car, not per defect item.

Audi Q8 ownership: what six years of MOTs show

The ten-day re-test pass rate is highest at 65.7%; The later re-test pass rate is lowest at 3.7% — the gap is 61.9 percentage points.

higher = larger sharecompare shares in percentage points

Failing is usually a same-week event, not a disaster. Of 722 failures followed through to their re-test, 30.61% were repaired and passed the same day and 65.65% within ten days; the median gap is 1 day. 1,183 defect items were cleared in the process.

Per mile driven, not per year. Dividing failures by the miles that actually went onto the odometers between consecutive tests gives 0.096 failures per 10,000 miles, on a median of 8,798 miles a year across 3,240 chains. This is the number to compare between models — an annual rate quietly rewards cars that barely leave the drive.

Two populations hide inside one model. 40.12% of these cars strung together three or more tests with nothing recorded at all, while 2.89% carried the same advisory three times or more — the same fault, noted, ignored, noted again. When you buy used you are buying one of those two histories, and the MOT record shows which.

Odometer anomalies: 0.247% of 3,243 chains show a reading lower than the previous test, with a median drop of 12,170 miles. We call this an anomaly and not fraud on purpose — instrument swaps, imports, unit mix-ups and keying errors all land in the same bucket. Obvious typos (drops under 100 miles or over 90% of the reading) are already excluded.

Audi Q8 safety recalls and how to check yours

DVSA recall campaigns stand out at 11.

bigger number = more recorded casescompare like-for-like scope, not sample size alone

recall campaigns launched per year

DVSA lists 11 safety recall campaigns for the Audi Q8, covering roughly 28,926 vehicles in total. A recall is the manufacturer fixing a fault for free, so an open recall on your car costs nothing to clear.

Counter-intuitive, and measured on our own data: across the 25 families published here, more recalls go with a lower MOT Risk Index (r = −0.52). Heavily recalled models are not worse cars in the test bay — an active manufacturer removes the fault before it becomes an MOT failure.

Check whether a specific car has an outstanding recall — free, by registration — at DVSA's recall service. Source: DVSA vehicle safety recalls (check-vehicle-recalls.service.gov.uk), OGL.

Audi Q8 technical service bulletins: what dealers are told

US market, Audi Q8, model years 2019–2021 only. A count of bulletins, not a UK failure rate.

NHTSA manufacturer communications are 1,764.

bigger number = more recorded dealer communicationsnot affected vehicles or confirmed faults

These are the issues the manufacturer fixes quietly: service communications sent to dealers without a public recall campaign. They show what the service network has been told even when the issue never became news.

United States · NHTSA manufacturer communications

Caveat worth stating plainly: this is NHTSA data about US-specification cars. British cars sold under the same name often use different gearboxes, engines and equipment, so a bulletin may describe a component that was never fitted here. The file counts dealer communications, not affected vehicles or confirmed failures, and it cannot tell you whether an individual UK car has the issue. A communication can carry more than one subject tag, so topic counts do not have to add up to the total. Source: NHTSA Manufacturer Communications API (US-market vehicles; queried model years 2015-2022). Licence: U.S. Government work / public domain · retrieved 2026-09-25.

Audi Q8 owner complaints: what goes wrong

US market, Audi Q8, model years 2019–2021 only. A count of owner complaints, not a UK failure rate; NHTSA has no UK denominator.

Lamps & electrical are highest at 66; Body & structure are lowest at 3 — the gap is 63.

bigger number = more recorded casescompare like-for-like scope, not sample size alone

Two different populations answering two different questions: the MOT records what an inspector can measure once a year, the complaint file records what annoyed or frightened an owner on the road. A component high in one column and absent from the other is the interesting case — driver-assistance and electronics dominate complaints while almost never appearing as an MOT failure item.

US owners have filed 166 complaints about the equivalent Audi Q8 to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, including 3 that mention a crash, 0 a fire and 2 an injury. These are owner reports, not verified findings — but they are the only large public record of what drivers themselves notice, and they cover the years between MOT tests.

Caveat worth stating plainly: US-specification cars, self-selected reporters, no denominator — complaint counts scale with how many cars were sold there and how motivated owners are to file. The mechanical gap matters as much as the statistical one: American cars of the same name often carry different gearboxes, engines and equipment — automatics where Britain buys manuals — so a drivetrain complaint filed in Ohio may describe a part that was never fitted here. Read the ranking inside a model, not between models, and treat drivetrain entries with particular caution. Source: NHTSA ODI consumer complaints (US market, public domain) — US-spec vehicles, indicative only.

Audi Q8 inspection results in other countries

Netherlands APK is well below the reference at 23.8%, against 50.8% nationally.

higher = larger sharecompare shares in percentage points

The verdict is consistent across every regime where the difference is clear, which is the strongest form this comparison takes: independent inspectorates, different rulebooks, same direction of travel.

Worth dwelling on how mundane the top of that list is: tyre pressure, tread depth, headlight aim. The Dutch APK records 0.447 defects per inspection against a much higher national failure rate than Britain's, and the reason is not that Dutch cars are worse — it is that the two regimes draw the line between "note it" and "fail it" in different places. Codes are the RDW's own; the English wording here is our translation of the Dutch original.

Britain is not the only country that inspects every car every year, and the Audi Q8 is on the road in all of them. Each national regime writes its own rules, so the pass rates below are not comparable to each other — what does travel across a border is whether a model sits above or below its own country's average.

Rows with fewer than 500 inspections are not published. Sources: RDW open data — Meldingen Keuringsinstantie + Geconstateerde Gebreken + Gekentekende voertuigen (2024), CC0. Not an RDW endorsement.. Adapted; licences and full notice.

Audi Q8 MOT: quick answers

Audi Q8 MOT Risk Index is well below the reference at 62.4, against 100 for a car with the same age profile.

below 100 is betterabove 100 is worse100 = normal for this model at that age

What is the Audi Q8 first-time MOT pass rate?

91.06% of first attempts passed in 2024 (4,285 tests). This is the first-time figure: retests after repair are excluded. Basis: first-time, excluding retests.

Why does this number differ from other sites?

Other sites often report a pass rate that includes retests or counts all attempts. Our 8.94% figure is the first-time initial failure rate, using 4,285 primary tests as the denominator (first-time, excluding retests). The age-adjusted MOT initial-failure ratio 62.4 is shown separately because raw rates compare fleet age as well as cars.

Compare the Audi Q8 with other cars

Volkswagen T-Roc is highest at 62.4; Audi S3 is lowest at 62.1 — the gap is 0.3 points.

below 100 is betterabove 100 is worse100 = normal for this model at that age

Same brand

All Audi MOT statisticsAudi Q2 MOT statsAudi S3 MOT stats

Similar risk

Audi Q2 (index 62.4)Volkswagen T-Roc (index 62.4)Audi S3 (index 62.1)

Same size class

how Honda Fit compareshow Audi R8 compareshow BMW M2 compares

By build year

Audi Q8 2018Audi Q8 2019Audi Q8 2020

By area

Audi Q8 MOT failure rate by postcode area

By failure group

Audi Q8 brakes failuresAudi Q8 vehicle identification failuresAudi Q8 lamps, reflectors and electrics failuresAudi Q8 noise, emissions and leaks failuresAudi Q8 suspension failuresAudi Q8 tyres failuresAudi Q8 visibility failures

Inspections abroad

Audi Q8 in the Netherlands