Four model years of electric cars, each scored against its own class and year — and the year-by-year table that shows which ones to buy by the model year rather than the badge.
October 2026 · 2022–2025 model years · 4 min read
Saying this first makes the rest honest: across 2022 to 2025, not one electric sedan averages better than its class. The best of them, Nissan Leaf, sits at 1.43× where 1.00× is typical. The electric SUVs manage two that do. So this is a ranking of the best available options, not a list of dependable cars, and it is written that way.
Four model years is enough to separate a model with a problem from a model with a bad year, which is the main thing a used buyer needs. Every car below has at least two scored years in the window; one good year on its own is an anecdote.
Mean combined index — both how often a car needs fixing and how costly those fixes are, in one number — across every scored model year in the window. Each year is measured against that year's class average, so a four-year mean is not diluted by the class getting better or worse. The 2025 shortlist plots the two dimensions separately.
Open any of them with the vehicle preselected:
A mean hides the thing you most want to see. Nissan Leaf is first on average and had the single best year of any electric sedan — 2024, at 0.59× and #1 of 22 — followed immediately by one of the worst, 2025 at 1.93×. That is a model to buy by the year, not by the badge.
Porsche Taycan is the opposite shape and the most encouraging line in the table: 3.47× in 2022, 0.87× in 2025 — a 4.0-fold improvement in four model years, and 5th of 12 executive cars for the latest one. Tesla Model 3 tracks the same way more gently, from 2.18× to 1.23×.
The pattern across every EV shortlist we have built: the 2022 and 2023 model years are where the scores are bad, and the 2025s are markedly better. If you are buying used electric, the model year matters more than the model.
Electric sedans are judged against the deepest, oldest classes in the dataset. A mid-size car competes with 18 other 2025 mid-size cars, many of them Camrys and Accords with twenty years of engineering behind them. An electric mid-size SUV competes in a class where plenty of the field is also new. Same scores, harder room.
The split between the two indices holds here as it does everywhere: electric sedans draw reports far more often than their classmates, and when something goes wrong it costs about the same. The 2025 overall shortlist has that comparison charted across all four powertrains.
One caveat worth stating plainly. This measures reported issues per vehicle sold. Electric vehicles are newer, their owners skew early-adopter, and software faults that a gasoline car would never generate a report for are counted here. Some of the EV frequency gap is almost certainly reporting behaviour rather than hardware. The severity figures, which barely move between powertrains, are the harder number.
Across 2022–2025, Nissan Leaf has the best mean combined index at 1.43×, from 4 scored model years. Its 2024 model year is the single best electric sedan year in the window, at #1 of 22 in class.
It improves steadily: 2022 at 2.18×, 2023 at 1.52×, 2024 at 1.12×, 2025 at 1.23×. The 2025 ranks #14 of 18 mid-size cars. Averaged across the window it is 1.52×, second among electric sedans.
2022 and 2023, almost across the board. Nissan Leaf scored 1.85× in 2022; Tesla Model 3 scored 2.18× in 2022; Tesla Model S scored 1.63× in 2022. Every one of them is better by 2025.
Not materially. Median fix severity for 2025 electric vehicles is 1.00× the class average against 1.00× for gasoline. The difference is in how often they need attention, not what it costs when they do.
Failure reports filed with NHTSA, weighted against US sales volumes and benchmarked within segment and model year. Full methodology.
All 12 systems, the full class plotted, and every model year back to 2004 — for any vehicle in the dataset.
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