Tesla Model 3 — MOT statistics 2024

The Tesla Model 3 failed 14.03% of 116,025 first MOT attempts in 2024 ("first-time", excluding retests). Adjusted for the age of the fleet, its initial-failure ratio is 122.9 (100 = expected for its age profile). This car fails its MOT about 23% more often than expected for its age.

Age-adjusted peer: Nissan Qashqai (index 122.9) — the two published results are 0.0 index points apart.

Tesla Model 3 common problems: what actually fails the MOT

Lamps, reflectors and electrical equipment stand out at 2.7 per 100 tests, against 23.5 per 100 tests nationally.

higher bar = fails more oftenrate per 100 tests

family vs national — top component groups, per 100 tests. Legend: This family · National avg.

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

Tesla Model 3 MOT advisories: what gets flagged

Tyres are highest at 95.1 per 100 tests; Identification is lowest at 0.7 per 100 tests — the gap is 94.4 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.

How does the Tesla Model 3 perform as it gets older?

At age 3 stands out at 13.8%, against 10.9% for all cars of the same age.

higher = larger sharecompare shares in percentage points

Chart axes: car age, years · failure-rate scale 0–46%.

Takeaway: solid line: this family; dashed: all cars; from about age 3 it stays above the national age curve.

How dangerous are Tesla Model 3 MOT failures?

Major defects stand out at 11.6 per 100 tests, against 63.3 per 100 tests nationally.

higher bar = fails more oftenrate per 100 tests

Chart values: Minor 4.3 · Major 11.6 · Dangerous 18.4.

Per 100 tests on this family. National average: Minor 24.4 · Major 63.3 · Dangerous 12.9 per 100.

Does the month of a Tesla Model 3 MOT matter?

Dec is highest at 15.7%; Feb is lowest at 12.6% — the gap is 3.1 percentage points.

higher = larger sharecompare shares in percentage points

Chart scale: 11%–29%.

bars: Tesla Model 3 · dashed: all class-4 cars

Takeaway: the spread between best and worst month is 3.1 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 19.5% of these cars were first registered in March with another17% in September — 37% 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. Peaks here mark when cars are tested, not when they are worse.

Tesla Model 3 average mileage by age

At age 4, the middle half of Model 3s runs from 29,569 miles to 54,455 miles, against 40,192 miles as the median.

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

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

A typical 4-year-old Model 3 has ~40,192 miles on the clock. Much more — ask why; much less — check for gaps in the MOT history.

Where in Britain the Tesla Model 3 fails its MOT most

Oxford area is highest at 18.1%; Sheffield area is lowest at 10.9% — the gap is 7.2 percentage points.

higher = larger sharecompare shares in percentage points

Toughest areas	% failing	vs model overall
Oxford (OX)	18.08%	+4.0 pp
Milton Keynes (MK)	17.5%	+3.5 pp
Reading (RG)	15.93%	+1.9 pp
Peterborough (PE)	15.56%	+1.5 pp
Northampton (NN)	15.21%	+1.2 pp

Easiest areas	% failing	vs model overall
Sheffield (S)	10.87%	-3.2 pp
Leicester (LE)	11.42%	-2.6 pp
Nottingham (NG)	12.56%	-1.5 pp
London NW (NW)	13.25%	-0.8 pp
Birmingham (B)	13.6%	-0.4 pp

Why do areas differ?

For each external factor we correlate the area fail rate with the factor across postcode areas that have ≥800 tests of this family, then compare the bottom vs top fifth (quintile) of the factor. Correlation, not causation — factors travel together (the north is colder and often poorer; urban areas are denser and less salted). Road surface condition is joined now, for the 91 English areas the DfT publishes, and it explains nothing: the correlation with suspension failures is −0.01 and with body and structure failures 0.07. Potholes wreck wheels and tyres between tests, but by the time a car reaches the bay the road it drives on leaves no measurable trace.

In areas with the highest urban share this model fails 6.2 pp less often than in the lowest fifth (r=-0.61, n=57 areas with ≥800 tests).

In areas with the highest income deprivation this model fails 6.2 pp less often than in the lowest fifth (r=-0.55, n=54 areas with ≥800 tests).

In areas with the highest terrain gradient this model fails 5.7 pp more often than in the lowest fifth (r=0.46, n=34 areas with ≥800 tests).

Values shown in the quintile chart

Factor	Low Q	High Q	Gap	Correlation
Urban share	16.2%	10.0%	-6.2 pp	r=-0.61
Income deprivation	16.1%	9.9%	-6.2 pp	r=-0.55
Terrain gradient	12.0%	17.7%	+5.7 pp	r=0.46

Factors that only mean something combined

Some conditions are useless on their own and informative multiplied together. Frost days alone say little — Britain barely freezes. Salt tonnage alone says little — it tracks frost. Distance to the sea alone says little. Multiply the first two and divide by the third and you get an index of how hard an area attacks a car's underside, and it lines up with the corrosion defects we actually record. We built five such combinations and tested each against our own data. Three survived; two did not, and the failures are listed here on purpose — a proxy that was never checked is decoration. One survivor only survived on the second attempt: built from a crude stand-in for street parking it failed outright, and rebuilt from the census — terraced streets carrying more cars than they have driveways — it works, and carries information the salt index does not.

Composite area indicators, each tested against a defect rate we measure

Composite	Built from	Tested against	r	Verdict
Underbody corrosion	frost days × salt load ÷ (distance to coast + 1)	share of tests with a corrosion defect	+0.42	holds (116 areas)
Tyre wear	rain days × annual miles ÷ age at first tyre advisory	share of tests failing on tyres	+0.45	holds (116 areas)
Overnight corrosion	terraced housing × cars per household × frost days	share with a corrosion defect	+0.41	holds (102 areas) — and adds signal beyond the first index
Deferred maintenance	deprivation × advisory-to-failure conversion ÷ labour rate	cars repeating the same advisory	−0.26	fails (118 areas)
Powertrain stress	engine capacity ÷ kerb weight	suspension, brake and emissions failures	−0.16	fails (22 models)

The deprivation result is the one worth dwelling on. The intuition that poorer areas defer repairs is strong enough that most people treat it as established. We tested it twice — once on raw failure rates (r = 0.04) and again, more fairly, on whether an advisory turns into a failure — and it did not hold any of the three times we tried it — on raw failure rates, on advisory-to-failure conversion, and again with deprivation measured properly inside each nation rather than England alone. We are closing it. What does predict local failure rates is the density of test centres, which is a statement about testing, not about cars.

All external-factor correlations (machine-readable)

Factor	r	n areas	Low-Q fail %	High-Q fail %	Gap pp	Low-Q factor	High-Q factor
Urban share (0–1)	-0.615	57	16.2	10.0	-6.2	0.6	1
Income deprivation (score)	-0.552	54	16.1	9.9	-6.2	0.1	0.2
Terrain gradient (% grade)	0.456	34	12.0	17.7	+5.7	0.4	2.9
MOT centre density (per 10k vehicles)	0.207	57	10.5	13.4	+2.9	4.9	7.3
Distance to coast (km)	-0.045	57	14.9	14.0	-0.8	7.9	86.5
Road-salt proxy (g/m²-yr)	0.030	57	12.1	13.1	+1.0	216.4	476.5
Frost days (days/year)	-0.002	57	14.1	13.3	-0.9	10.9	27

Deprivation uses England IMD 2019 income score only (Scotland SIMD is a different scale). Salt proxy is a simplified NWSRG-style dry-salt sum from air Tmin; coastalness is distance from the area centroid to the nearest coastline.

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: 7%–20% failing.

How many miles does a Tesla Model 3 last?

100,000+ miles stands out at 1.9%.

higher = larger sharecompare shares in percentage points

Of 115,909 tests of this family with a usable odometer in 2024, 1.9% had already reached 100k miles, 0.3% reached 150k, and 0.0% reached 200k — a cross-section of cars still presenting for MOT, not a full birth cohort.

Tesla Model 3 faults that come together

Tyres + Visibility stand out at 3.54×, against 1× if the faults were independent.

above 1.0× = more than expectedbelow 1.0× = less

Defects in «Tyres» and «Visibility» appear together 3.54× more often than chance (445 co-occurrences in the same test; lift≥1.3, n≥300).

Lift = how many times more often both groups appear on the same test than if independent. Thresholds: lift ≥ 1.3, co-occurrences ≥ 300.

Is low mileage better for a Tesla Model 3?

Cars driven under 5,000 miles a year stands out at 10.2%, against 15.8% 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 10.2% vs 15.8% for 8–12k miles/year — 5.6 pp lower (n_low=2,075, n_normal=6,429). In this family low annual use is associated with fewer MOT fails, not more — the ‘garage queen’ penalty is not visible in overall fail rates.

Tesla Model 3 MOT repair costs

The MOT-failure repair budget per test runs from £30.15 to £57.28, 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 £30 to £57, 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.

Tesla Model 3 rust problems: where they corrode

Age-standardised corrosion susceptibility stands out at <0.1×, against 1× for the national age-standardised rate.

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

This Tesla Model 3 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.

Does a Tesla Model 3 advisory become a failure?

Tyres are highest at 11.3%; Non-component advisories are lowest at 0% — the gap is 11.3 percentage points.

higher = more likelypercentage is the observed transition probability

chance the same component fails at the next MOT, given an advisory now

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 11 in 100 cars, and the median gap is 11.9 months and roughly 10,811 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 a Tesla Model 3?

Tyres after a advisory at age 3-5 are highest at 12.4%; Tyres after a passed at age <3 are lowest at 9.2% — the gap is 3.2 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.

Tesla Model 3 ownership: what six years of MOTs show

The ten-day re-test pass rate is highest at 54.9%; The later re-test pass rate is lowest at 3.8% — the gap is 51.0 percentage points.

higher = larger sharecompare shares in percentage points

Failing is usually a same-week event, not a disaster. Of 14,187 failures followed through to their re-test, 41.33% were repaired and passed the same day and 54.85% within ten days; the median gap is 1 day. 25,798 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 0.145 failures per 10,000 miles, on a median of 10,281 miles a year across 31,496 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. 34.02% of these cars strung together three or more tests with nothing recorded at all, while 4.56% 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: 0.231% of 31,540 chains show a reading lower than the previous test, with a median drop of 9,459 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.

Tesla Model 3 safety recalls and how to check yours

DVSA recall campaigns stand out at 11, against 0.8 campaigns per 10,000 licensed cars after fleet size is accounted for.

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 Tesla Model 3 — 0.8 campaigns per 10,000 of these cars licensed in Great Britain, covering roughly 73,238 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.

Tesla Model 3 technical service bulletins: what dealers are told

NHTSA manufacturer communications are 233.

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 2026-08-03.

Tesla Model 3 owner complaints: what goes wrong

Brakes are highest at 491; Visibility is lowest at 179 — the gap is 312.

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 3,443 complaints about the equivalent Tesla Model 3 to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, including 307 that mention a crash, 19 a fire and 162 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.

Tesla Model 3 inspection results in other countries

Finland Katsastus stands out at 48.3%, against 26.3% nationally.

higher = larger sharecompare shares in percentage points

The countries disagree about this car, and that is worth saying out loud rather than averaging away. A model can sit above its national average in one country and below it in another because the fleets are not the same cars: different model years, different engines, different roads and salt, and inspection rules that weight components differently. Treat each row as evidence from one regime, not as a verdict.

Useful as a cross-check on the UK defect table above: the categories are named differently, but a component that dominates in both regimes is a genuine weak point of the model rather than an artefact of one country's testing style.

Worth dwelling on how mundane the top of that list is: tyre pressure, tread depth, headlight aim. The Dutch APK records 1.141 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 Tesla Model 3 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.

One caveat before you read the UK row: these are raw failure rates, because no other country publishes the age detail our index needs. This model's raw UK rate looks better than the national average while its age-adjusted index is 122.9 — the fleet here is unusually young, and the raw column silently credits that. The index above is the fair comparison; this table is for reading each country against itself.

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.; Traficom — Periodic inspections of cars by model / by model and fault object 2024, CC BY 4.0; Statens vegvesen — Periodisk kjøretøykontroll (PKK) 2024, CC BY 4.0.

Tesla Model 3 MOT: quick answers

Tesla Model 3 MOT Risk Index stands out at 122.9, 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 Tesla Model 3 first-time MOT pass rate?

85.97% of first attempts passed in 2024 (116,025 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 14.03% figure is the first-time initial failure rate, using 116,025 primary tests as the denominator (first-time, excluding retests). The age-adjusted MOT initial-failure ratio 122.9 is shown separately because raw rates compare fleet age as well as cars.

Compare the Tesla Model 3 with other cars

Seat Ibiza is highest at 124.2; Tesla Model 3 is lowest at 122.9 — the gap is 1.3 points.

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

Head-to-head

Nissan Leaf head-to-headMercedes C Class head-to-head

Similar risk

Nissan Qashqai (index 122.9)Vauxhall Corsa (index 123.5)Seat Ibiza (index 124.2)

Same size class

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