Polestar 2 — MOT statistics 2024

The Polestar 2 failed 11.3% of 5,886 first MOT attempts in 2024 ("first-time", excluding retests). Adjusted for the age of the fleet, its initial-failure ratio is 96.2 (100 = expected for its age profile). This car is too close to call — statistically indistinguishable from normal for its age.

Age-adjusted peer: Skoda Roomster (index 96.3) — the two published results are 0.1 index points apart.

Polestar 2 common problems: what actually fails the MOT

Tyres stand out at 11.3 per 100 tests, against 9.8 per 100 tests across UK electric vehicles of the same ages.

higher bar = fails more oftenrate per 100 tests

family vs national — matched to UK electric 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.

Polestar 2 MOT advisories: what gets flagged

Tyres are highest at 31.2 per 100 tests; Brakes are lowest at 4.8 per 100 tests — the gap is 26.4 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: Polestar 2 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 (11.8% against 11.4%): 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 6,924 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 14.5 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 Polestar 2 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 Polestar 2 perform as it gets older?

The 2 at age 4 stands out at 15.5%, against 13.1% for all vehicles of the same age.

higher = larger sharecompare shares in percentage points

Chart axes: car age, years · failure-rate scale 0–17%.

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

How dangerous are Polestar 2 MOT failures?

Major defects are well below the reference at 9.3 per 100 tests, against 52.8 per 100 tests nationally.

higher bar = fails more oftenrate per 100 tests

Chart values: Minor 3.0 · Major 9.3 · Dangerous 5.9.

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

Does the month of a Polestar 2 MOT matter?

Dec is highest at 13.0%; May is lowest at 7.3% — the gap is 5.7 percentage points.

higher = larger sharecompare shares in percentage points

Chart scale: 6%–33%.

bars: Polestar 2 · dashed: all class-4 cars

Takeaway: the spread between best and worst month is 5.7 percentage points — noticeable seasonality. 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.

Polestar 2 average mileage by age

At age 4, the middle half of 2s runs from 27,089 miles to 48,369 miles, against 36,226 miles as the median.

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

Does high mileage mean more Polestar 2 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, 10.3% of those with under 40,000 miles failed first time versus 20.2% of those with 70,000–100,000 miles.Inside this age group, higher mileage goes with more failures.

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

A typical 4-year-old 2 has ~36,226 miles on the clock. Much more — ask why; much less — check for gaps in the MOT history.

Where in Britain the Polestar 2 fails its MOT most

Chelmsford area is highest at 20.6%; Walsall area is lowest at 2.3% — the gap is 18.3 percentage points.

higher = larger sharecompare shares in percentage points

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.

Polestar 2 survival: which cars are still on the road

By age 4 is close to the reference at 100.0%, against 100.0% at the ages 4–6 reference level.

higher = larger sharecompare shares in percentage points

By age 4, only about 100% as many cars of this family present for MOT as at ages 4–6 (reference n≈817); survivors still fail at 15.5% vs 15.5% at age 4. Older cars that still appear are a selected subset — weaker ones have already left.

How many years is a Polestar 2 likely to last?

estimateObserved only until age 4. 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.

Polestar 2 faults that come together

Lamps & electrical + Tyres stand out at 2.90×, against 1.00× if the faults were independent.

above 1.0× = more than expectedbelow 1.0× = less

Defects in «Lamps, reflectors and electrical equipment» and «Tyres» appear together 2.90× more often than chance (20 co-occurrences in the same test; 45 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).

Polestar 2 running costs for a fleet

Vehicles failing at age 4 stand out at 16.0%, against 12.0% at age 3, 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.

Polestar 2 rust problems: where they corrode

Age-standardised corrosion susceptibility is well below the reference at <0.1×, against 1.00× for the national age-standardised rate.

above 1.0× = rusts more than averagebelow 1.0× = rusts less

This Polestar 2 virtually never fails on corrosion once age is held constant, and its owners live in areas that are gentler than most 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.

What will fail next on a Polestar 2?

Tyres after a advisory at age <3 are highest at 8.3%; Lamps, reflectors and electrical equipment after a passed at age <3 are lowest at 1.6% — the gap is 6.7 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.

Polestar 2 ownership: what six years of MOTs show

The ten-day re-test pass rate is highest at 65.4%; The later re-test pass rate is lowest at 2.4% — the gap is 63.0 percentage points.

higher = larger sharecompare shares in percentage points

Failing is usually a same-week event, not a disaster. Of 624 failures followed through to their re-test, 32.21% were repaired and passed the same day and 65.38% within ten days; the median gap is 1 day. 965 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 0.137 failures per 10,000 miles, on a median of 10,705 miles a year across 1,371 chains. This is the number to compare between models — an annual rate quietly rewards cars that barely leave the drive.

Odometer anomalies: 0.218% of 1,374 chains show a reading lower than the previous test, with a median drop of 1,905 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.

Polestar 2 MOT: quick answers

Polestar 2 MOT Risk Index is close to the reference at 96.2, 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 Polestar 2 first-time MOT pass rate?

88.7% of first attempts passed in 2024 (5,886 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 11.3% figure is the first-time initial failure rate, using 5,886 primary tests as the denominator (first-time, excluding retests). The age-adjusted MOT initial-failure ratio 96.2 is shown separately because raw rates compare fleet age as well as cars.

Compare the Polestar 2 with other cars

Volvo V90 is highest at 96.3; Land Rover Discovery Sport is lowest at 95.9 — the gap is 0.4 points.

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

Similar risk

Skoda Roomster (index 96.3)Volvo V90 (index 96.3)Land Rover Discovery Sport (index 95.9)

Same size class

how Hyundai Coupe compareshow Chevrolet Captiva compareshow SEAT Toledo compares

By area

Polestar 2 MOT failure rate by postcode area

By failure group

Polestar 2 body, chassis and structure failuresPolestar 2 lamps, reflectors and electrics failuresPolestar 2 tyres failuresPolestar 2 visibility failures