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By Benjamin Wehrmann, Clean Energy Wire
Electric vehicles (EVs) tend to function more reliably and have fewer breakdowns than internal combustion engine cars (ICEs), the German Automobile Club (ADAC) has found in an analysis of its 2024 repair service data.
“We found that EVs are less prone to breakdowns than ICEs of the same age group,” ADAC said after reviewing its 3.6 million service missions in the past year.
While there were 97% more EVs on the road than in 2023, the number of EV breakdowns with ADAC assistance only grew 46%, it added. For cars aged between two and four years, ICEs were two-and-a-half times more likely to break down than EVs.
However, two ICEs were overall the most reliable, namely the MINI and the Audi A4, while the Tesla Model 3 was the most reliable EV, ADAC said. Out of every 1,000 ICE vehicles, 9.4 required assistance in 2024, while the same was true for only 3.8 EVs. The most common malfunction in all cars (44.9% of all cases) was a failing starter battery.
German customers have only recently begun warming to EVs as an alternative to traditional ICE cars, for which German manufacturers traditionally have been a technology leader. The country is likely to miss its target of putting 15 million electric cars on the road by 2030, with 1.65 million battery electric cars registered as of 1 January 2025. The prospective next government plans to introduce several policies to incentivise EVs.
This article was first published by Clean Energy Wire here. It was republished under a “Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence (CC BY 4.0)” .
