- cross-posted to:
- hackernews@derp.foo
- cross-posted to:
- hackernews@derp.foo
I wish they’d link to the actual study so we can see how they determine “reliability”.
They don’t get very granular, but they give a fairly detailed overview of the methodology here:
https://www.consumerreports.org/cars/car-reliability-owner-satisfaction/who-makes-the-most-reliable-cars-a7824554938/Edit: I used to subscribe, and as a result received their surveys occasionally. They seemed pretty well done, but people are people and probably aren’t always objective in their reporting.
Yeah I saw that but again it’s very basic explanations…
We study 20 trouble areas, from nuisances—such as squeaky brakes and broken interior trim—to major bummers, such as potentially expensive out-of-warranty engine, transmission, EV battery, and EV charging problems. We use that information to give reliability ratings for every major mainstream model.
Where are they getting that information and how are they using it? This is important and their conclusion is incredibly counter-intuitive and refutes pretty much all other research I’ve seen.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
They send a survey to their subscribers.
The next paragraph states:
We weigh the severity of each type of problem to create a predicted reliability score for each vehicle, from 1 to 100. We use that information to give reliability ratings for every major mainstream vehicle. (The reliability rating is then combined with data collected from our track testing, as well as our owner satisfaction survey results and safety data, to calculate each test vehicle’s Overall Score.)
This is the best summary I could come up with:
CR is known for buying cars for its own test fleet, but for its annual auto reliability survey, the organization cast a wider net.
Hybrids have 19 potential trouble areas—all the above minus the charging problem—and EVs have just 12, since they go without things like internal combustion engines, fueling systems, or transmissions.
And as our data has consistently shown, reliability-minded consumers would be best served by forgoing brand new vehicles in their first model year," said Jake Fisher, senior director of auto testing at CR.
Tesla, despite a legion of horror stories, finds itself very middle of the pack in terms of overall reliability, and in general it builds dependable EV powertrains—less so bodywork, paint/trim, and climate systems.
In general, the Asian OEMs dominate the upper end of the reliability chart, although Mini, Porsche, and BMW also made the top 10.
As noted, Tesla placed pretty solidly mid-pack, along with other domestic brands like Buick, Ram, Cadillac, Chevrolet, and Dodge.
The original article contains 896 words, the summary contains 161 words. Saved 82%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Gotta love how they don’t state what the most reliable EV is, even in the Consumer Reports original article. I guess you have to pay for that info.
I think we all know what the most unreliable ones are, however
This may be anecdotal or a result of them being new and having less documentation/etc, but in my experience when they do have problems it’s way more of a pain in the ass to deal with too.
What’s easier to diagnose, your fuel pump just died or there’s a faulty diode on a board tucked up underneath literally everything?
Electronic boards pretty much never fail in cars. They have no moving parts and the chips are encased in epoxy or resin. When it fails it’s pretty much always connected sensors, cabling or fuses or other external parts. And the board can usually tell you what part if you read out the error codes.
And the board can usually tell you what part if you read out the error codes.
That’s no different than the car, basically. Mechanics don’t really independently diagnose stuff on modern cars anymore. They plug in the OBD scanner and the car tells them what might be wrong.
There is always need for a master mechanic to figure out the hard / weird stuff. But for every one of them you need 6 parts replacers to read codes.