The Institute of the Motor Industry (IMI) has hit out at a proposed pushback for the first MOT on vehicles with a warning that such a move could damage business for the auto repair industry in Gloucestershire.

A consultation which was first opened in 2016 from the Department for Transport (DfT) indicated that the government would prefer to shift the first MOT date back to four years, with an unchanged yearly check thereafter.

But the IMI has now said it can't back a 4.1.1 schedule in a consultation response.

The IMI response states: "It is the Institute's position that the existing 3.1.1 be maintained until evidence is sufficient that electric vehicles are not failing MOT tests on significant dangerous defects at a greater rate than petrol cars.

"It is likely that misunderstanding the differences of the technologies leads to the increased failure rate for EVs. Therefore, the IMI further recommends that education is desperately needed to reduce this failure rate and subsequent threat to road safety."

This January and after the experience of the Pandemic, during which annual statutory MOT testing was allowed to be extended, the DfT renewed calls for views on the future of current law, again indicating a preference to increase the date at which a first MOT is required from three to four years. Testing frequency would then be annual after the fourth year.

The IMI says it used the latest 2021 evidential data based on 82.43 million failure and advisory items recorded in 40.3m lines of test data, and also conducted research among drivers and its membership businesses.

It said 60% of respondents that run MOTs from their business are "very concerned" that the shift to four years would impact their business volumes for testing and service work.

The National Franchised Dealers Association has also added its concern that the change might not benefit drivers.

The MoT has been in place since 1960, with the three-year threshold for the first MOT test brough in late in the decade – up until that date, the first test was set at 10 years.