Show HN: An AI that predicts how long a car will last

In the UK every car more than three years old must take an annual MOT test to make sure it meets legally required safety standards. The results of these tests contain information about the condition of the car and details such as its current mileage, engine size, and fuel type. These results are also openly available for anyone to see, for any car, past and present.

I collected the MOT histories of more than 16 million cars (more than 100 million tests) which have already reached the end of their life. I then trained an ML model using a random forest to predict how much longer a car will last given its current MOT history. Just enter a valid UK number plate and get a prediction back, along with statistics about the make and model of the car. Feel free to use the random number plate button to get a prediction for a random car if you don’t know a valid UK number plate.

The model currently gets within a year of a car's actual end of life for 51% of cars.

Try it out and let me know what you think.

BTW just out of curiosity, any other metrics you can share about how accurate it ends up being? Like RMSE/MAE?

And I would guess that there's a significant problem with outliers. Accidents for new cars, replacing an engine+gear for old cars, etc. Is this the case?

Do you have a website / LinkedIn / Facebook?

I also wonder if adding maintenance history or at least one datapoint, the last maintenance done, would add some resolution and give better results for old cars that are maintained well.

My wife keeps nagging me to buy a new car, maybe she's right.