The Inbound Index

What is coming through the workshop door, read three years ahead.

Forward research for the UK independent garage trade, built entirely from public records. Current printing: August 2026.

How it can be known

A car's first MOT falls three years after registration, fixed in law, and registrations are public. Registered in 2025 means arriving in 2028. So the mix of cars reaching a first MOT, by fuel and by make, is on the record about three years before it arrives, and it can be read by region and by local authority as well as nationally.

The mechanism has been checked against seven years of actual MOT results, three times: on diesel, on electric cars, and on petrol, the one fuel that turns inside the window, where it called the turning point to the year. The booking system and the benchmarking tools describe the road behind. None of the operators interviewed for the report had a forward view built from that record, and none of the tools they named provides one. This is an attempt at one.

The August 2026 report: six things already on the record

What's coming down the road: a forward look for the UK independent garage trade. Twenty-three pages, with the method, the sources and the limits of every figure, and a two-page summary. The headline readings:

• Electric reaches roughly 22% of first MOTs in 2028 and about 24% in 2029. The 2028 figure rests on registrations already made. On the Government's zero-emission vehicle mandate, roughly 28% by 2030 and about 49% by 2032, and the mandate has been softened once already, so 2032 is better read as a range of about 45% to about 65%. There is until about 2030 to prepare, and then the mix moves fast.
• The everyday work changes more slowly. Even in 2030, only about one in six of all four-to-ten-year-old cars will be electric.
• More than a fifth of first MOTs arrive with a worn tyre, and it runs highest on heavy cars. Mild-hybrid diesel and battery-electric fail on tyres at 8.0% and 7.9% against petrol's 4.2%. The category at the top is not electric, so this is mass rather than electric drive, and heavy cars are already coming through the door.
• Chinese brands reach about one in ten first MOTs in 2028, rising towards one in seven the year after. Just under half of that is MG, which has sold here far longer than the other entrants and already arrives at volume, so the unresolved parts and technical data questions bear mainly on the other half.
• One model arrives with one fault. Of MG electric cars reaching their first MOT last year, 3.2% came in with a fractured road spring, and 6.3% of the ZS EV. Every other make together with the same fault: 31 cars in roughly 237,000. MG warrants seven years, so at this age it is a thing to look for rather than a thing to stock.
• The people coming into the trade in England are being trained at a lower level. Starts on the three-year motor vehicle apprenticeship are at their lowest outside the pandemic years, while starts on the Level 2 autocare qualification have risen more than five-fold since 2018/19, just as the arriving cars need more diagnosis.

What it does not do

It says what mix of work is coming and roughly when. It does not say how much work there will be, because volume turns on the economy, on policy and on how long people keep cars, none of which is on the record. And it cannot price the work: the public record carries no invoice values, so a workshop's own figures are the only place that answer lives.

It is a Great Britain mechanism. Northern Ireland tests at four years through the DVA and sits outside it. Hybrids cannot be read on it, and the report sets out why.

The national figures are the wrong instrument

Every reading above changes area by area. The arrival readings go down to each of the 361 local authority areas, and run across the local authorities of one English conurbation, the electric share of cars due a first MOT in 2028 spans about seven points between the highest and the lowest, on sites a short drive apart. A national average is the wrong instrument for planning one workshop.

Local readings are available to the businesses that serve the trade: workshop management software, parts and tyre distribution, training providers and trade bodies. They carry the same method and the same stated limits as the national report.

The report, and how to get it

Independent garage operators can ask for the report and we will send it. Businesses that serve the trade can ask about readings cut to the areas their customers are in. If any of this matches or contradicts what you see through the workshop door, that evidence is worth more than the model, and we would like to hear it.