Tesla MOT: What Fails on the Model 3, Model Y, Model S and Model X

Tesla has sold four cars in Britain, and between them they have now been through close to 140,000 MOT tests. That is a large enough record to say with some confidence what a Tesla fails on, what it collects advisories for, and how the four models differ from one another and from the rest of the electric market. The short answer is tyres. Almost everything else on a Tesla's test record is a distant second, and the component owners tend to worry about most, the brakes, hardly ever causes a failure at all. The detail matters more than the headline, though, particularly for anyone about to buy one second-hand who wants to know what the test record can reveal and what it cannot.

What a Tesla MOT does and does not check

A Tesla is tested like any other car. The first MOT falls three years after first registration, then every twelve months, and the certificate, the reminder and the consequences of driving without one are the same as for a diesel hatchback. Any MOT test station can carry out the test; no special approval or equipment is needed, though the car must be lifted on its designated points rather than on the battery casing, and any station that sees electric cars regularly will know that. The inspection is the standard class 4 test: lights, steering, suspension, brakes, tyres and wheels, seatbelts, body and structure, glass, wipers and washers, mirrors, horn, number plates, and the warning lamps for the safety systems. What is missing is the emissions test, for the obvious reason that there is no exhaust to put a probe in. With it goes a whole section of the inspection that petrol and diesel cars have to get through.

The battery is not tested. Nor is range, charging, the charge port, Autopilot, the cameras, the touchscreen or the software. The tester will look underneath at the battery casing for damage, check that nothing is hanging loose, and inspect whatever wiring can be seen in the same way as on any other car. Nobody plugs anything in to read the state of health, and nothing about the pack's condition appears on the certificate. A Tesla with a decade of clean passes could have lost a meaningful slice of its original range and the record would not show it. The rules for electric cars generally are set out in the companion guide to the electric car MOT.

Two features of the cars explain a good deal of what the record shows. The first is regenerative braking. A Tesla does most of its slowing through the motors, so the friction brakes are used lightly, the pads last an unusually long time, and the discs, rarely swept clean by a pad, corrode and pit from disuse. A tester is obliged to record what is in front of them, which is why brake disc advisories are common on Teslas even though brake failures are rare. The second is the combination of weight, instant torque and large wheels. Every Tesla carries a heavy battery pack low in the floor, every one of them can put all of its torque through the tyres the moment the pedal is pressed, and many of them leave the showroom on 19-, 20- or 21-inch wheels wearing wide, low-profile tyres with very little sidewall. That is a recipe for tyre wear and for tyre damage, and the test record is largely a record of both.

The numbers: four models, one pattern

The MOT Files' analysis of DVSA anonymised test data covers 87,484 tests on the Model 3, 34,928 on the Model Y, 10,836 on the Model S and 6,213 on the Model X. The two newer, smaller cars pass at almost exactly the same rate, and the two older, larger cars are noticeably worse.

The age profile behind those figures matters. The great majority of Model 3 tests and nearly every Model Y test in the record were carried out on cars between three and five years old, so the overall pass rates for those two describe young cars at their first, second or third test. The Model S and Model X are the opposite. Only 953 Model S tests and 1,505 Model X tests fall in that band, and the rest were on older, higher-mileage cars. The Model S band figure of 81.1% rests on so few tests that it should be read as indicative rather than precise. The Model X figure hardly moves with age at all, which is its own kind of verdict.

Set against the wider market, none of the four does especially well. Across the 51 electric models in the analysis, electric cars aged three to five pass 86.7% of tests, against 89.9% for petrol and diesel cars of the same age. The best-ranked electric car is the Jaguar I-Pace at 92.0%. Every Tesla sits below the electric average, and the Model X has the lowest pass rate of any electric car in the analysis once vans are set aside. The full ranking, with every model's failure list, is on the electric cars hub.

The pattern behind the pass rates is the same on all four cars: the failure list is headed by tyres, and by some distance. A petrol or diesel car has more ways to fail. It has an emissions section to get through, an exhaust system to corrode, and brakes that do all of the slowing and wear accordingly. A Tesla has none of those, lighting barely features on any of the four lists, and so the tyres are left carrying almost the whole burden. A Model 3 fails roughly one test in six, and when it does, a worn tyre is involved more often than not. The mechanism is the one already described: a heavy car with instant torque, wide low-profile tyres and short sidewalls, driven on roads whose surfaces have not improved. The same pattern runs through the electric market as a whole in milder form, and the companion guide on why electric cars fail the MOT sets it out across all 51 models.

One caution about the figures. A failure share is a percentage of failed tests, not of all tests. When tread depth appears in 50.5% of failed Model 3 tests, that means half of the roughly one in six that fail, not half of all Model 3s. Advisory shares are different. They are a percentage of every test, pass or fail, which is why a 37.1% tyre advisory rate is in some ways the more striking of the two numbers.

Model 3: the tread-depth car

The Model 3 arrived in Britain in 2019, so the earliest cars have been through several tests and the bulk of the fleet is at its first, second or third. Across 76,325 tests on cars aged three to five, 84.7% pass. The average recorded mileage across all Model 3 tests is about 51,000, which for a fleet this young means plenty of them are being driven hard and far.

When a Model 3 fails, the reason is a worn tyre more often than anything else. Tread depth below the legal limit appears in 50.5% of failed tests, so half of all Model 3 failures involve at least one tyre that has simply been used up. Tyre cords visible or damaged appears in a further 34.4% and a seriously damaged tyre in 24.0%. Those three items overlap, since a tyre worn through to the cord is both worn and damaged, but taken together they describe a car whose failures are overwhelmingly about rubber.

There is nothing mysterious about why. The Model 3 is heavy for a car of its class, it is rear-driven or all-wheel-driven with the full torque available from a standstill, and the standard 18-inch wheel gives way to 19 and 20 inches on the higher trims. A driver who accelerates as the car invites them to will find the rear tyres go quickly, and a driver who does not will still find that the weight and the wide contact patch wear the inner shoulders in a way that is easy to miss from the kerbside. The record cannot see driving style, but it can see the result. A tyre advisory, meaning a tyre close to but not yet below the limit, is recorded on 37.1% of all Model 3 tests, pass or fail. More than a third of every Model 3 presented for test has at least one tyre the tester considers close to the limit. That figure, more than the failure share, tells you how the fleet is being run.

Behind the tyres comes the suspension. A worn suspension pin, bush or joint is recorded in 10.5% of failed tests, and a second, closely related suspension wording appears in another 9.0%. A worn suspension arm bush is a wear item on any car, but a heavy car with firm suspension and a great deal of torque reacting through its arms gets through them faster, and the advisory rate of 8.1% across all tests shows the wear starting well before it becomes a failure.

The last item of any note is the tyre pressure monitoring system, recorded as faulty in 5.9% of failed tests. On any car first used since 2012, a tyre pressure warning that stays on, or a system that is obviously not working, is a major defect. On a Tesla it almost always means a sensor that has stopped reporting, a sensor whose internal battery has died, or a second set of wheels fitted for winter without sensors in them. It is one of the few things on the list that can be put right in an afternoon, which makes it a frustrating way to fail. The item is explained in full under tyre pressure monitoring inoperative.

Brake discs are recorded as worn or pitted, as an advisory, on 14.5% of all Model 3 tests. They do not appear among the leading failure items at all. The full breakdown for the car is on the Model 3 data page.

Model Y: the tyre-damage car, arriving at its first MOT

UK deliveries of the Model Y began in 2022, which means the first cars reached their first MOT in 2025 and the fleet is passing through the test in real numbers for the first time now. Nearly every one of the 34,928 Model Y tests in the record, 32,483 of them, is on a car aged three to five, and those cars pass 83.8% of the time. The average recorded mileage is about 37,000, lower than the Model 3 for the simple reason that the cars are newer.

The failure list looks like the Model 3's turned upside down. A seriously damaged tyre appears in 50.9% of failed Model Y tests and tyre cords visible or damaged in 47.8%, while tread depth below the limit appears in only 23.9%. The Model 3 fails on tyres that have worn out. The Model Y fails on tyres that have been hurt: a sidewall cut, a bulge where the carcass has let go, cord showing through a gouge that a kerb or the edge of a pothole put there. Both are tyre failures, but they have different causes and they say different things about the car and how it is used.

The record cannot say why the two cars differ, but the likely explanation is not hard to find. The Model Y is heavier than the Model 3 and considerably taller, and it does the work of a family car: school runs, supermarket car parks, tight residential streets and rough estate roads, all of which put a wheel against a kerb more often than a saloon's owner would manage. Its wheels are larger too. Nineteen inches is the starting point, and the higher trims run 20- and 21-inch wheels with very little sidewall between the rim and the road. A tall, heavy car on a short sidewall that meets the edge of a pothole at speed damages the tyre in a way that a lighter car on a smaller wheel does not. The sidewall is pinched between rim and tarmac, the carcass is cut or the cords are broken, and the tyre is finished even when the tread on it is nearly new. On top of that, a fleet averaging 37,000 miles has not yet had time to wear its tread out. The failures it does have are events rather than mileage.

The distinction matters for the driver because a damaged tyre is treated more seriously than a worn one. A tyre with ply or cord exposed is a dangerous defect, which means the car must not be driven from the test station until the tyre has been changed. A cut deep enough to reach the cords, or a lump or bulge caused by the structure failing, is a major defect under tyre damaged, and a cut or bulge not yet at that point is recorded as an advisory. The Model Y is the only one of the four Teslas with a tyre damage advisory large enough to appear among its leading items, at 6.3% of all tests, which tells you testers are seeing plenty of kerbed and gouged tyres that have not yet failed.

The rest of the list is familiar. A tyre close to the limit is recorded as an advisory on 37.7% of all Model Y tests, almost exactly the Model 3's figure, so the wear is coming even if it has not yet arrived as a failure. A worn suspension bush appears in 11.8% of failed tests, with a second wording adding 7.0%, and as an advisory in 7.1% of all tests. Tyre pressure monitoring accounts for 3.9% of failures. Headlamp aim, at 3.6%, is the one item on any Tesla's list unrelated to weight or tyres. An aim fractionally outside the permitted range is a quick adjustment for any garage with a beam setter, and worth asking about before the test rather than after. Brake disc advisories, at 7.4% of all tests, run at about half the Model 3's rate, which is what you would expect of a younger fleet whose discs have had less time to corrode. The full list is on the Model Y data page.

Model S and Model X: age, mileage and the suspension bill

The Model S has been on sale in Britain for more than a decade and the Model X for the better part of one, and their test records describe older, heavier cars that have covered a great many miles. The Model S averages about 89,000 recorded miles across 10,836 tests, the highest of any Tesla by a wide margin, and the Model X about 66,000 across 6,213. Both pass a little under 80% of tests overall, the lowest figures in the Tesla range, and the Model X's is the lowest of any electric car in the analysis once vans are excluded.

The Model S list is still headed by tyres, with tread depth in 24.2% of failed tests, cords visible in 21.7% and a seriously damaged tyre in 12.5%, but the tyre items are far less dominant than on the younger cars and the suspension has moved up to meet them. A worn suspension bush appears in 17.1% of failed tests, with a second suspension wording adding 13.5%, and a worn steering ball joint appears in 9.7%, an item that does not feature among the leading failures of any other Tesla. This is what age and weight do to a car. The bushes and joints in a Model S have spent years carrying more than two tonnes over British roads, and by the time the car reaches the used market at high mileage they are due. The advisory figures say the same thing from the other direction. A worn suspension bush is noted on 11.1% of all Model S tests, a tyre close to the limit on 30.5%, brake discs on 13.0% and brake pads on 10.9%. Wiper blades appear in 5.9% of failures.

The Model X has the lowest pass rate of any electric car in the analysis once vans are excluded, at 79.0% overall and 79.1% at three to five years across 1,505 tests, and its record has two features no other Tesla shares. The first is the windscreen. The Model X has an enormous glass area at the front, a screen that sweeps up and over the front occupants' heads, and the wiper blades that clear it are correspondingly long and work across a steep curve. A blade that is past its best leaves smears and unswept bands across a large area of glass, and the tester's job is to confirm that the wipers clear enough of the screen to give the driver an adequate view. Wiper blades not clearing the screen appear in 16.2% of failed Model X tests, getting on for three times the Model S figure and absent from the leading items on the Model 3 and Model Y. It is also the most avoidable failure on any Tesla, since a pair of blades takes minutes to change.

The second is the brake pads. A brake pad worn below 1.5mm appears in 5.6% of failed Model X tests, and a brake pad advisory on 12.7% of all tests. On the Model 3 and Model Y, pads do not feature at all. The Model X is very heavy, it is often driven fully loaded, and regenerative braking is limited when the battery is cold or nearly full, so its friction brakes earn their keep more often than those on the smaller cars. Otherwise the list is the usual one: tyre cords visible in 43.8% of failed tests, tread depth in 23.3%, a seriously damaged tyre in 15.2%, a worn suspension bush in 9.7% with a second wording at 7.8%, a tyre advisory on 36.0% of all tests and brake discs on 13.1%. The full breakdowns are on the Model S and Model X data pages, and the whole range is gathered on the Tesla make hub.

Brakes: rare failures, common advisories

Drivers moving to a Tesla from a petrol car often expect the brakes to be the weak point of the test, because on a petrol car the brakes do all of the slowing and wear accordingly. The record says otherwise. Brake items do not feature among the leading failures on the Model 3 or the Model Y at all, they are absent from the leading Model S items too, and on the Model X the only brake failure of any note is the pad worn below 1.5mm, at 5.6% of failed tests. Brake performance is measured on every test, both the overall efficiency and the balance across each axle, and the Teslas get through that part of the inspection with very little fuss.

What the brakes do collect is advisories, and specifically advisories for discs. Brake discs worn or pitted are noted on 14.5% of all Model 3 tests, 13.1% of Model X tests, 13.0% of Model S tests and 7.4% of Model Y tests. On a conventional car, a worn disc is normally the product of use. On a Tesla it is the product of the opposite. The motors do most of the slowing, so the pads touch the discs only occasionally, and a disc face that is not regularly scrubbed by a pad rusts. In a damp climate that happens within a day or two of the car standing still. Light surface rust is swept off the next time the pads are used firmly. Rust that is left for months eats into the metal and leaves pits, and pits do not come out. The tester, looking at a disc face that is discoloured and pockmarked, records brake discs worn as an advisory, because the disc is deteriorating even though it is not yet worn or weakened enough to fail.

The advisory is worth taking seriously, but calmly. It seldom becomes a failure, and it says nothing about the pads, which on a Model 3 or Model Y last a very long time. The remedy is to use the friction brakes deliberately. A handful of firm stops from speed on a clear road, repeated over a week or two, keeps light corrosion at bay. Deep pitting will not come off, and a disc in that state will eventually need replacing, though on a Tesla that day is a long way off. The one Tesla on which pads matter is the Model X, where the pad advisory on 12.7% of all tests and a pad worn below 1.5mm in 5.6% of failures show the friction brakes doing real work.

Reading a used Tesla's MOT history before you buy

The MOT record is the most useful free document available on any used car, and on a Tesla it rewards reading in a particular way because of what it does and does not contain. The general method is set out in the guide to checking a used car before you buy, and a Tesla needs a few adjustments to it.

Start with the mileage. Every test records a mileage reading, and Teslas cover large distances. The average Model S in the record has done about 89,000 miles, and the average recorded mileage across all Model 3 tests is about 51,000 on a fleet that is mostly under five years old. A low-mileage example is not automatically the better car, since a Tesla that has stood for long periods will have rustier discs than one that has been used, but a mileage curve that rises steadily is what you want to see. A reading that steps down, or a gap in testing with no obvious explanation, deserves the same scrutiny it would on any car, and the guide to red flags in an MOT record covers those.

Then read the tyre entries with the fleet figures in mind. Because a tyre advisory appears on 37.1% of Model 3 tests and 37.7% of Model Y tests, a single one is not a mark against the car; it is close to the norm. What matters is what happened next. A tyre recorded as close to the limit one year and as a tread depth failure the next tells you the owner ran the tyres to the wire. A seriously damaged tyre failure on a three-year-old Model Y tells you the car met a kerb or a pothole hard enough to break the carcass, and a car that has done that has very possibly disturbed its wheel alignment too, so look for uneven wear across the tyres now fitted and ask whether the geometry was checked afterwards. Four matching tyres of a reputable make suggest an owner who understood what the car needed. Four different makes on a car that wears them this fast suggest the opposite.

On a Model S or Model X, the suspension entries are the ones to weigh. A worn bush recorded as an advisory is the tester telling you what next year's failure will be, and on these two cars the failure figures for suspension are the highest in the range. A worn steering ball joint on a Model S is the same kind of warning. Neither is unusual on a heavy car at this mileage and neither is a reason to walk away, but both are work the car needs, and a seller who has had it done will have the invoice. On a Model X, a wiper blade failure in the history is trivial. A brake pad failure is a sign the car has been worked hard.

Finally, be clear about what the record cannot tell you, because on a Tesla the list is longer than usual. The MOT has nothing to say about battery health, and that is the thing a used Tesla buyer most needs to know. Nothing in the record shows whether a drive unit or a battery pack has been replaced, whether the car has had accident repairs that did not touch a tested component, whether the driver assistance features work as they should, or what software the car is running. Ask the seller for evidence of battery health, from the car's own diagnostics or from an independent report, because it answers the one question the MOT never asks. A Tesla that passes cleanly is roadworthy. Whether it is a good Tesla is a separate matter, and the rest of the electric market's record on the electric cars hub is a useful yardstick for how any one model's pass rate compares.

Before the test: what to check on a Tesla

Almost everything a Tesla fails on can be seen by its owner in ten minutes on a driveway, which is more than can be said for most cars.

Tyres first, since they account for the great majority of Tesla failures. Check the tread depth across the full width of each tyre, not just the outer edge you can see from standing. The legal minimum is 1.6mm across the central three-quarters of the tread and around the whole circumference, and the tyre tread depth law guide sets out how that is measured. On a Tesla, look closely at the inner shoulder, which wears faster than the outer on many of them and cannot be seen without turning the steering to full lock at the front or getting down to the ground at the rear. A tyre can look healthy from the kerbside and be at the cord on the inside. Then run a hand around both sidewalls of every tyre, the inner as well as the outer, feeling for cuts, bulges and any place where cord shows through. On a Model Y this is the check most likely to save the test. Confirm that no tyre pressure warning is showing on the screen, and if one is, find out why before the tester does.

Lighting barely features on any Tesla's failure list, but every lamp should still be checked, including the number plate lamps and the rear fog lamp, and on a Model Y it is worth having the headlamp aim looked at if the car has ever been loaded heavily or has had any work at the front. Wiper blades should be replaced if they leave streaks or miss areas of the screen, which on a Model X is not a small area, and the washers should reach the glass with fluid in the reservoir. The horn should work. Both number plates should be clean, undamaged and legible.

The screen is the dashboard, so any warning shown there for the anti-lock brakes, stability control, airbags, seatbelts, power steering or tyre pressures is an MOT failure as well as a fault. If one is showing, the test will not pass until it has been cleared.

Two things remain. Listen for knocks from the suspension over speed bumps and rough surfaces, because a knock from the front on a Model 3 or Model Y is usually a bush or a link on its way out, and it is better found before the tester finds it. And use the friction brakes. A few deliberate firm stops in the fortnight before the test will clear light corrosion from the discs and give the tester a clean face to look at rather than a rusty one.

A Tesla's MOT is, more than any other car's, a test of how its tyres have been looked after. Get those right and the record for the two younger cars is unremarkable. On the older, heavier two, add the suspension and, on the Model X, a pair of wiper blades. What the test cannot tell you, about the battery above all, is where the rest of your attention belongs.