For comparison: Last year VW ID4 had a failure rate of 2%, and the average for _all_ electric cars (no matter age, including Teslas) was 7% failure.
Causes: Breaks, wheels, steering, and a few more critical things along those lines.
Objectively speaking, Tesla cannot manufacture cars that live up to European standards.
Source: https://fdm.dk/nyheder/nyt-om-trafik-og-biler/tesla-skandale...
So it's quite possible that both are true: Maybe ID4 has lots of non-safety and non-environment problems, so it is in the shop very often, but still rarely fails an official inspection.
None of other owners I spoke to were particularly happy with theirs either.
(I drive a Skoda Enyaq, so no particular shade meant towards the VW-group)
(It's charging on the parking lot right now, unlocked because central lock has failed)
I have no idea what German auto shops do, but whenever I take my car in to a shop in the US for service (routine or otherwise) they generally include various inspections and adjustments to various things, including things that Google is telling me are part of the TÜV inspection.
Going to the yearly inspection on worn tires and brakes is just owners failure.
Unless further data/evidence is provided, it is reasonable to assume all car owners treat their cars equally shitty, and as such can be ignored in this equation since it applies equally to all manufacturers.
Tesla didn't even recognize the inspection failures in Denmark as real at first, so it's probably fair to assume that they're only now trying to sort out the problems on new cars, and that we'll see many more failing Tesla inspections the coming years, even on cars sold up to this day.
Some manufacturers use better steel and therefore have a longer disk lifetime.
And quite a few decades ago, people noticed that when you mix chromium, nickel, vanadium or things like that into your steel, it doesn't rust. Car manufacturers are just very slow in noticing.
(inspection costs around 80 euros in Denmark, so there's no financial reason to go to a pre-inspection anyways, just do the inspection and have it redone if the car fails).
Tesla wouldn't even recognize the problem at first, and refused repair of customer cars. Of course there's issues with every brand of car. It's just that the numbers show that Teslas are much, much worse with regards to safety critical components.
Tesla does not have this. People just bring it straight to the yearly technical inspection.
Stop making up excuses for Tesla, it's tiresome.
You should check your tires, yes. At least while changing from winter to summer and vice versa, however if the cars torque profile is too aggressive and it's eating tires, you should note it at the user's manual that thread wear should be checked more frequently with respect to other cars.
> how is that to do with Tesla manufacturing standard?
My friend's Toyota Auris needs new discs every 100,000KM, new pads every 60,000KM. I change discs around 60,000KM (heavier car, mostly rush-hour traffic, hilly city, automatic transmission), and never failed an inspection w.r.t. braking power.
- Vehicle safety and Equipment
- Steering and Suspension
- Side Slip
- Wheels and Tires
- Lights
- Lighting and Electrical
Note that the oldest Tesla is 2015, and most are 2020+ which is significantly newer than a good chunk of the cars on the road here.
Also note that in my personal experience of ~10 NCTs, I've had 3 nominal failures which were stupid trivial things that aren't actually maintenance issues. (1, extra seat not in car. 2, tent peg fell in and folding seat didn't lock in place. 3, folding seat wasn't up when tested, as well as at least one where my mechanic swears that they screwed it up (steering rack boot not attached))
https://www.rsa.ie/road-safety/statistics/nct-statistics-and...
For comparison the ID4 had 0 failures at this age for this category, and for a much larger sample size.
I assume these are all taxis as they're being tested so early. This implies there a ton of unsafe privately owned Model Ys on the road.
I'm not sure what the vehicle safety and equipment failures would be, nor the distinction between lights and lighting and electrical. The fact that it's a noticable failure point is a little surprising to me because all the lights should be LED and pretty solid.
(Though, I'll say, even though we have mandatory inspections, 5-10% of cars in my area are driving with at least one light that's out.)
They shouldn't fall out of alignment that quickly so I'd guess they're poorly aligned from the factory
I once had a Fiat Panda from 1984, 20 years old by then. It had a small checkup and maintenance, then went for the inspection. It passed, but was highlighted for inspection from the controlling organizing. The mechanic, owner of the shop, started getting really nervous about losing his license, asking, is the car allright, is it really allright? And it passed inspection again.
Anecdotally most people I know here don't bother with preinspection. It's usually cheaper even if it fails the first time. Although looking at the data most people driving EVs could probably save time/money by investing in a tire thread guage!
I also don't buy the argument brought up several times in the comments here that this is caused by the lack of regular inspections. This is about very new cars, there shouldn't be that many issues to catch in inspections when the car is less than 3 years old.
- phone holder in wrong location or not securely fastened
- missing first aid kit
- split in windshield wiper
- low washer fluid
- headlight alignment
- tyre slits from curbing
- tyre wear levels
- surface dirt on brake lines
- rock chip in windshield
- rust on brake disc
- bodywork damage
I think it is reasonably safe to assume that the issues that are not directly related to the specific model of the car are roughly evenly distributed among cars of the same age.
I had a 5th gen Camaro that had terrible brakes because I could never get the rotors/pads hot enough during normal operation to properly "clean" them. They were so big you just couldn't do it without visiting the freeway or a race track. I had to get the rotors machined or replaced about once a year because the car mostly went to the grocery store.
I think the best thing you can do is to occasionally stand on the brakes as hard as you can from >60mph. In a heavy EV you probably only need to do this once a week/month.
There is something about mechanical contrivances and rare use. Complex machines tend to get sloppy when they aren't exercised regularly. The best way to prove a machine will work correctly is to use it frequently.
I see this a lot on other sites where people talk about buying an old Landrover or Range Rover as a "weekend car". That's never going to work.
My nearly-30-year-old Range Rover had the fewest problems when I was putting around 3000 miles a month on it, all year round. If it sat long enough for the engine to cool to ambient, sure as shit you'd find something wrong the next time you started it.
Why are they not publishing which defects exist? Not only it make more credible, it would also warn people of what to look for.
So while it would be nice to get more detailled stats, I think this is still really helpful. For me the TÜV report was a very important source for my decission on which models (and to a lesser degree manufacturers) I should avoid.
However, as others have written, there is still some huge bias in those numbers. Especially German brand car shops provide an inspection service, where they pre-check and repair the car before the official inspection. Many of those German brands are also very big on company leasing, to the point where almost nobody buys a new BMW, Mercedes or Audi privately, they either get a new one as a company car via company leasing, or they get a used leasing return car. All those leasing cars always have the aforementioned inspection service as part of the leasing package. So those numbers are to be taken with a huge huge grain of salt.
I found a mention of the report on this page from the ADAC: https://www.adac.de/news/tuev-report-2026/
I think they mention suspension, brake and light related issues.
If you live in Europe your car has to be inspected every 2 years. For new cars this kicks in after 3 years, and then after that it is every 2 years.
The inspection is carried out by authorized mechanics and typically takes less than an hour. It is worth noting that authorities keep a close eye on authorized mechanics to ensure they do not cheat. If you cheat (eg let people pay you to pass their car), you lose authorization.
The reason the TÜV report carries weight is that Germany has Europe’s largest vehicle fleet and TÜV has a strong reputation. Inspection standards are largely harmonized across Europe, and approvals or methodologies used by TÜV are often accepted or mirrored elsewhere.
Defects are classified by severity. Serious defects can make the vehicle unroadworthy immediately; less serious ones require repair and re-inspection; very minor issues are simply noted.
Even non-EU countries like Norway and the UK follow essentially the same inspection framework.
The mandatory one, liability insurance, which pays out others' damages in case your car is in an accident and the driver of your car is found to be at fault. Base rates for those are by law based on the rate of payouts per car model and per owner's county at that insurance company. A multiplier makes the base rate more expensive or cheaper respectively for new drivers, accident-prone drivers or long-time accident-free drivers. No other external statistics are allowed to play a role.
The two non-mandatory ones are "Vollkasko" and "Teilkasko", which pay for damages your own car suffered from various factors like animals, weather, accidents, road conditions and stuff like that. Vollkasko even pays for accidents you caused yourself, Teilkasko only for some of the aforementioned things. In both, insurers are still required to do some classification by county, but they are allowed to factor in statistics about your car's repair cost.
But none of those will pay for your car just randomly breaking down and needing repairs, that is something you get a manufacturer's warranty for. And none of those is directly related to the mandatory inspections. I think I've read some statistics that driver behaviour and skill is also a large factor in why there are less accidents in Germany, at least compared to some regions of the world... But make of those what you will, that might as well be jingoism and often also comparing apples and oranges...
For instance US has a civil tort based system which tends to push prices up quite a bit because outcomes are entirely unpredictable. In Germany insurance is not litigation centric, so there are literally no punitive damages, pain-and-suffering awards are modest and predictable and compensation is based on standardized tables. So insurance cases very rarely make it anywhere near courts.
https://www.tuvsud.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2025/novem...
Just… I don’t know, actually look at your wheels and brakes every few thousand miles instead of let them ride for tens of thousands without service? Shouldn’t people be rotating their tires every 3-5000 miles anyways?
- Brake disks are not a regular maintenance piece. Brake pads are the pieces that need replacement every 30.000 kilometers, depending on how hard you use them. But brake disks can outlast the car.
- Axle suspension is also not regular maintenance piece. Damper, bushings and springs need supervision and get changed every 80.000 kilometers or so. But to change an axle suspension without a serious hit to the car is very weird.
Unless you are using brake disks and an axle suspension designed for a 1,000 kg lighter car. In that case, you might end with twisted or broken pieces after a few thousand kilometers.
Let's read the text further and see the description for the winner, Mazda 2, emphasis mine
--- start quote ---
Mazda 2. Only 2.9 percent of these French-manufactured Japanese hybrid compacts turn up at their first periodic technical inspection with significant faults at an average mileage of 29,000 kilometers.
--- end quote ---
And then:
--- start quote ---
At the bottom of the table, the Tesla Model Y took over in last place from the Tesla Model 3 (17.3 percent). Second to bottom was the Ford Mondeo (14.3 percent), while the third from bottom was the Tesla Model 3 at 13.1 percent.
--- end quote ---
So, at regular inspection intervals (as proscribed by manufacturers and regulators) Teslas show significant faults.
...at least that is how they are sold. And people take it seriously.
Also maybe a chart of "uptime" per model - ie. how many days in the year on average was it drivable, vs in the shop being repaired/inspected/waiting for parts.
Does anyone make that?
And they do provide some statistics about running cost: https://www.adac.de/rund-ums-fahrzeug/auto-kaufen-verkaufen/...
However, both aren't that trustworthy, just better than nothing, because:
The first one about road-side breakdowns is frequently gamed by car manufacturers, because in leasing and warranty contracts they often require the use of their own road-side assistance orgs, thereby bypassing ADAC. So the more expensive German manufacturers are definitely underrepresented there.
And generally, ADAC has been known to produce unreliable tests and statistics: https://www.focus.de/auto/ratgeber/sicherheit/neue-vorwuerfe... https://www.sueddeutsche.de/auto/neue-enthuellungen-sind-auc...
I assume the denominator is cars registered with ADAC, rather than all cars in germany? Presumably that means those with lease contracts requiring another breakdown service wouldn't affect the stats?
Not quite, the denominator is the number of road-side assistance calls they get.
ADAC has a driver membership system, where you get that assistance for free as part of your membership as a driver. You can still call them as a non-member, and I suppose those calls will factor in the statistics as well, but that is expensive, so it's rare. And you don't register your car with them, so they don't know what their members are driving, you just tell them your membership number and can get assistance for whatever car you are currently driving in.
> Mercedes will usually receive better care than a cheap Dacia that may never see an authorized repair shop Poor Mercedes. Authorized shops never recommend to replace transmission fluid or do care about engine roughness. Unauthorized shop and Dacia will replace engine oil every 10-15k km or 40-60k km for gearbox and the car can easily do 2-3x more distance than Mercedes. Audi TFSI engines require full rebuild after 120k km because of such servicing, Mercedes V8s break after 25-40k km (valve springs break, cylinders got scratched).
It’s great that for 2nd time in HN this propaganda without facts is spread again. And even if I’m defending Tesla here I love and drive petrol V8s. Not supporting diesel gate, simple maintenance and maybe some day (because they don’t break) easy repairs.
These numbers are meaningless because the top manufacturers do pre-checks/repairs at the dealer before you go to TUV for inspection.
Once again, my intuition is wildly off regarding how bad even the relatively good things are. 3% defect rate is good?
Tesla seems insane. How do you get away with being so much worse for so many years in a highly competitive market?
Hrm, I wonder.
Since Tesla have very high failure rates they may be dragging the overall EV numbers down. So the sensible thing to do would probably be to look at reliability of EVs with the Teslas taken out of the dataset and look at what it does to the overall reliability numbers for EVs. I have a feeling it might nudge EVs ahead of ICE cars more clearly.
Last time I saw a TÜV report it was that electric cars show up with a) rather little service checks in between and b) they are too heavy for the axels and that causes wear compared to a regular car.
I don't think the actual quality difference under Equal conditions is a large as the TUV report suggests.
Seems like if that’s true of BEVs generally one could find similar trends with Nissan Leafs, etc.
The average European drives about 12,000 km (~7500 miles) per year [1]. The maximum inspection period allowed by the EU for most personal cars is 2 years [2].
The average person in the US drives about 13,400 miles (~ 21,500 km) per year [3].
So, roughly, the average European vehicle is inspected after a driving distance which is about the same as that which the average US vehicle puts behind it in a year.
I thus doubt that the Tesla numbers from the article are greatly affected by a lack of inspections.
[1] https://www.acea.auto/fact/fact-sheet-cars/
[2] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/dir/2014/45/oj/eng (chapter III, article 5, point 1).
Your source clearly says that the first inspection needs to be at least four years after registration, so if you now buy a Tesla Model 3, you won't need to have it inspected until 2030. It's how Finland does it, so 4 years to first inspection, then every 2 years until the car is 10 years old, and then every year (4, 6, 8, 10, 11, 12…).
That doesn't mean the first inspection is only required after four years, only that it must be required after four years. The countries can still introduce stricter rules, like Germanys TÜV - the first inspection has to happen in the first three years here.
Nope. I do see a lot of broken Teslas.
~ Lord of the Lithium.