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. National report: August 2026. Postcode-area write-ups: September 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 for each of the 118 postcode areas in Great Britain 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. The cars due a first MOT from 2030 onwards have not been sold yet, so those years depend on the Government's zero-emission vehicle mandate, which sets how much of each carmaker's new-car sales must be zero-emission each year. If carmakers keep meeting it at the rate they have so far, electric reaches roughly 28% of first MOTs in 2030 and about 48% in 2032. The mandate has been softened once already, and depending on how closely carmakers meet it, 2032 could be anywhere from about 44% to about 64%. 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

The arrival readings above change area by area. They are cut for all 118 postcode areas in Great Britain, by the postcode area of the testing station. First MOTs across Great Britain rise from 1.65 million in 2025 to between 1.94 and 1.98 million in 2026 and between 2.07 and 2.11 million in 2028. By 2028 electric is past 30% of first MOTs in much of London and in Oxford, Cambridge and Milton Keynes, and still under 15% in seven Scottish areas from Shetland to the Borders. In 2025 there were about 74 first-timers for every testing station, but the spread runs from 163 a station in Watford to 26 in Llandrindod Wells. A national average is the wrong instrument for planning one workshop.

Postcode-area write-ups are available to the businesses that serve the trade: garage networks, parts and tyre distribution, equipment suppliers, workshop management software, training providers and trade bodies. Each write-up gives the first MOTs arriving in the area in each year to 2028 against the last three years, by fuel and by make, with the first-timers for every testing station. It shows what those cars would fail on at national failure rates by make, model and fuel, and it counts every car and van tested in the area last year by age and fuel, so the arrivals can be read against the whole fleet already on the road there. The write-ups rest on the same records and the same three-year mechanism as the national report, with the data and the method in an appendix, and each states its own limits.

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 for the write-up of any postcode area their customers are in, or for the table of all 118. 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.