EVs most likely to leave you stranded at the roadside
Thousands of motorists reveal whether their diesel, electric, hybrid and petrol cars have broken down and how well the problems were resolved at the roadside...
Exclusive What Car? research shows that electric vehicles (EVs) suffer more breakdowns than diesel, hybrid or petrol models, and that EVs are the least likely to be fixed at the roadside.
What Car? asked 29,967 car owners about their breakdown experiences over the past two years as part of the most recent What Car? Reliability Survey, conducted in association with MotorEasy.
Overall, 11% of survey participants said their car had broken down in the past two years, but the breakdown rate for EV owners was 16.8%, the highest of all fuel types. In contrast, 10.7% of petrol-powered cars needed to be recovered, 14% of hybrids broke down and 15% of diesel vehicles.
EVs are also the least likely cars to be fixed at the roadside by a recovery service: just 25% were given a permanent fix that enabled the driver to carry on with their journey, while 40% of petrol car owners were able to continue in a repaired car.
Unsurprisingly, EVs were the most likely to be towed to a garage than cars with other fuel types: 40% of EVs were recovered from the roadside and taken for repair, while 30% of petrol cars were towed.
However, there is some good news for EV owners: they are rated as the second best fuel type for being fixed for free. EV owners told us that 89% of their faulty cars were rectified at no cost, and only 3% had to pay more than £1500 to get their cars back on the road. That’s almost as good as the record for hybrid cars: 91% of these were fixed for free, and only 2% of owners reported having to pay £1500 or more to repair their car.
While petrol cars suffer fewer breakdowns than EVs and hybrids, they are more likely to land owners with repair bills: only 76% of petrol cars were fixed for free. Diesels are the least likely to be fixed gratis, though: only 67% of owners had the cost of their car repairs covered.
Breakdown and recovery rates by fuel type
| Fuel | Broken down | Perm fixed | Temp fixed | Towed | Not towed |
| Petrol | 10.7% | 40.1% | 22.7% | 29.6% | 7.7% |
| Diesel | 15.4% | 30.4% | 26.0% | 36.5% | 7.1% |
| Hybrid | 14.1% | 33.8% | 30.1% | 32.3% | 3.8% |
| Electric | 16.8% | 25.0% | 20.8% | 40.6% | 13.5% |
Breakdown recovery services rated
What Car? also used the reliability survey data to rate the level of service provided by nine major breakdown recovery companies, and by independent recovery services.
Respondents who had used a breakdown provider in the last two years were asked how long they had to wait for help to arrive and how good the service they received was. Patrols that arrived in an hour or less and got cars going again gained the highest marks; those that took more than two hours to arrive and didn’t fix the car or recover it for repair were given the lowest marks.
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