Volkswagen e-up — MOT statistics 2024

The Volkswagen e-up failed 8.47% of 1,535 first MOT attempts in 2024 ("first-time", excluding retests). Adjusted for the age of the fleet, its initial-failure ratio is 67.9 (100 = expected for its age profile). This car fails its MOT about 32% less often than expected for its age. Small sample — treat with care.

Age-adjusted peer: Mercedes-Benz S (index 68.0) — the two published results are 0.1 index points apart.

Volkswagen e-up common problems: what actually fails the MOT

Tyres are well below the reference at 4.8 per 100 tests, against 10.8 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.

Volkswagen e-up MOT advisories: what gets flagged

Tyres are highest at 42.3 per 100 tests; Non-component advisories are lowest at 4.8 per 100 tests — the gap is 37.5 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: Volkswagen e-up 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.

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 1,800 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.

Split by how much each car is driven. This is a split by annual mileage, not by body type — the MOT record does not say whether a car is a conversion. Within each band the index compares with vehicles of the same age driven as much.

Mileage matters here: matching on how much these are driven moves the figure by 20.7 points — this fleet is driven less than the vehicles it is measured against, so the age-only view flatters 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 Volkswagen e-up 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 Volkswagen e-up perform as it gets older?

The e-up at age 3 is well below the reference at 8.0%, against 12.4% for all vehicles of the same age.

higher = larger sharecompare shares in percentage points

Chart axes: car age, years · failure-rate scale 0–16%.

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

How dangerous are Volkswagen e-up MOT failures?

Major defects are well below the reference at 5.6 per 100 tests, against 52.8 per 100 tests nationally.

higher bar = fails more oftenrate per 100 tests

Chart values: Minor 2.3 · Major 5.6 · Dangerous 2.7.

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

Does the month of a Volkswagen e-up MOT matter?

May is highest at 13.2%; Jul is lowest at 5.3% — the gap is 7.9 percentage points.

higher = larger sharecompare shares in percentage points

Chart scale: 4%–33%.

bars: Volkswagen e-up · dashed: all class-4 cars

Takeaway: the spread between best and worst month is 7.9 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.

Volkswagen e-up average mileage by age

At age 4, the middle half of e-ups runs from 8,858 miles to 21,492 miles, against 14,452 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 e-up has ~14,452 miles on the clock. Much more — ask why; much less — check for gaps in the MOT history.

Where in Britain the Volkswagen e-up fails its MOT most

Too few tests in any single postcode area to name one, so this is the wider picture across 1,800 tests, 2019-2024.

Raw pass/fail rates, not age-adjusted: fleets differ by region. England is split north of Sheffield, between Sheffield and Oxford, and south of it.

Volkswagen e-up 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≈250); survivors still fail at 10.4% vs 10.4% at age 4. Older cars that still appear are a selected subset — weaker ones have already left.

How many years is a Volkswagen e-up 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.

Volkswagen e-up faults that come together

Defects in «Tyres» and «Visibility» were seen together in 5 tests (36 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).

Volkswagen e-up running costs for a fleet

Vehicles failing at age 4 stand out at 11.0%, against 8.0% 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.

Volkswagen e-up rust problems: where they corrode

Salt-belt exposure is well below the reference at 30th percentile, against 50th percentile as the middle of published models.

higher = larger sharecompare shares in percentage points

This Volkswagen e-up has too few tests to judge for 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 Volkswagen e-up?

Tyres after a passed at age <3 are highest at 3.6%; Visibility after a passed at age <3 is lowest at 3.0% — the gap is 0.6 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.

Volkswagen e-up MOT: quick answers

Volkswagen e-up MOT Risk Index is well below the reference at 67.9, 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 Volkswagen e-up first-time MOT pass rate?

91.53% of first attempts passed in 2024 (1,535 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 8.47% figure is the first-time initial failure rate, using 1,535 primary tests as the denominator (first-time, excluding retests). The age-adjusted MOT initial-failure ratio 67.9 is shown separately because raw rates compare fleet age as well as cars.

Compare the Volkswagen e-up with other cars

Jaguar XJ is highest at 68.5; BMW X6 is lowest at 67.3 — the gap is 1.2 points.

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

Same brand

All Volkswagen MOT statisticsVolkswagen T-Roc MOT statsVolkswagen Corrado MOT stats

Similar risk

Mercedes-Benz S (index 68.0)Jaguar XJ (index 68.5)BMW X6 (index 67.3)

Same size class

how Chrysler 300 compareshow Jeep Grand Cherokee compareshow Mercedes-Benz G compares

By failure group

Volkswagen e-up lamps, reflectors and electrics failuresVolkswagen e-up tyres failuresVolkswagen e-up visibility failures