Hard to answer the question because "reliable" means different things to different people. Infotainment system keeps dropping Bluetooth connections? "Unreliable." Engine seizes at 70 MPH? "Unreliable." Car only has minor mechanical problems, but dealers can't get parts for months? "Unreliable."
A car is too complex a thing to be characterized with a single scalar value.
Surely Toyota didn't win "most avoided", but rather most recommended?
But same re. infotainment. I have a suction cup MagSafe charging mount for my 2004 4Runner and I patched a bluetooth receiver into the stock head unit. Nothing better than that glorious amber glow when driving late at night. LCD's are blinding by comparison.
Plus this way I don't ever have to enter the iPhone's crippled CarPlay navigation mode, or really deal with CarPlay ever. I just use the phone the same as any other time, no new UI or "safe driving" features to obstruct me.
Yes, they won most recommended, sorry. I spent a while looking for the thread, but can't find it. Here's a very similar one, though, which was in AskReddit vs AskMechanics.
Part of the reason is that Toyota uses really conservative, classic engineering. They sell things that have worked well for decades, and they're hesitant to introduce new features.
That's also why their infotainment systems are notoriously terrible and they lagged years behind everyone else on selling electric cars. Gotta take the good with the bad.
after learning about how conservative Toyota is in general, their interest in hydrogen seems blown out of proportion solely because every other manufacture was so quick to move to electric. Toyota is still in the "figure out what works best long term" phase
I am more of a bike guy, so it was just something I recall reading. I don't have any deep insights into the car industry. I do have a Toyota though and it seems to run pretty well and gets me from place to place when needed.
From TFA: "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 weigh the severity of each type of problem to create a predicted reliability score for each vehicle, from 1 to 100."
The article explicitly accounts for the severity of different issues, and assigns them different point values.
You absolutely can reduce it to a single scalar value. You might personally disagree with the weights, but then your calculation is just a little bit different.
And you have to be able to reduce it to a scalar value at the end of the day, or else you'd never be able to make a decision about which car to buy, because you'd be entirely paralyzed when it came to cost/benefit assessments.
Technically a resolute agent can handle a utility function that messed up, but I'm not sure if people in general would be able to self-commit well enough.
I would expect vastly different results across different drivetrains, and probably even more differences across shape/size platforms (compact, sedan, truck, van, etc.).
There's a chart "How Electrified Powertrains Compare" which shows "Problems compared to gasoline-powered vehicles." You might be surprised to see that in fact EVs fare significantly worse than ICEs. I'd wager that they're mostly newer designs that naturally have bugs but instead of making modest changes to the car design in a new model, they're making significant/sweeping changes.
Oddly enough they don't state what the problems are. Meanwhile the ADAC (German car club) find that EVs have similar defect rates in components they share with ICE while having less engine issues. Overall, they conclude there is insufficient data for a meaningful statistic at this time:
For example the Mach-e has had issues with contactors welding open during heavy usage and charging as the same part was used between the standard and higher performance model.
I agree with you in principle but I think if you're Consumer Reports and you know much of your audience is very nontechnical (ie, will only have a very surface-level understanding of electric vs hybrid vs ICE) it makes some sense to attempt to distill an entire brand down to a single datapoint.
Many readers aren't savvy and just want to know what dealership to show up at to start asking what they can afford. If brand XYZ has amazing ICE reliability but their EVs are trash, you suddenly need to be a more informed consumer when you get to that dealership. Easier to just rank the companies with a long history of reliability across multiple product segments higher.
> Cars, including sedans, hatchbacks, and wagons, remain the most reliable vehicle type, with an average reliability rating of 57 (on a scale of 0 to 100), followed by SUVs (50) and minivans (45). “Sedans have fallen out of favor with consumers, but as a class they are very reliable,” says Jake Fisher, senior director of auto testing at Consumer Reports. “They often have less of the latest technology and features that can cause problems before the bugs are worked out.” Pickup trucks come in last, with an average reliability rating of 41.
> Pickup trucks come in last, with an average reliability rating of 41
That surprises me because I've browsed a lot of use vehicles and it seems to me like pickups can go to way higher miles than cars. I see a lot of them still run fine with 150,000+ miles
Maybe the owners are more willing to pay for major repairs though since getting a new one is so expensive?
This CR report is about the reliability of new cars over the first year of ownership. The correlation to how many issues there will be 10, 15, 20 years down the line is rather tenuous.
i don't think it's weird, reputation is one of the whole reasons for the existence of brands. If an ICE brand is willing to put their reputation on the line to bring an EV to market, that means something different than if they were to market their EVs under a new brand name.
Well, yes but then also newcomers to car design world make tons of design mistakes that seems clever at the start but do bite back later.
For most folks buying a car these days, if they choose EV its not due to environmental concerns, not primarily or secondarily, at least I don't know single one person among EV owners. They just want a reliable car, and 130 years of fine tuning combustion engines can end up more reliable in say 15 years than shiny unproven electric design (single case 1 but I can provide such - my previous bmw e46 vs tesla model s of my colleague, or model 3 of another colleague).
I don't see how 'Tesla' is not top of the list here. For the 'Trouble Areas' I suspected they're normalizing over the 'length of ownership' which would bias the scores towards older car companies.
Often times "Reliability" is calculated as "fraction of cars that have a recall or other unscheduled maintenance during the initial N months of ownership" and I believe Tesla is actually quite high in this regard?
My Tesla has been much less costly to own over the last three years than my Honda Odyssey: I have had several mobile repair visits for cosmetic issues and some OTA “recalls” but I find it hard to believe that any ICE car is more “reliable” than a Model 3 that didn’t gave obvious QC issues at delivery.
I mean, much less maintenance in absolute terms: no oil changes, transmission trouble, etc. Mostly just replacing windshield wipers and tires. The mobile service issues were all basically cosmetic issues that wouldn’t really impact reliability.
On the contrary, I'm impressed by how much Tesla has improved. They used to be second last, and the effort they've put into improving quality - especially on the Model 3 - is clearly paying off.
Tesla's reliability scores have always been pure and utter trash. This is the best result they have ever had. While other companies have a higher failure rate of major drivetrain components, Tesla is stuck somewhere between reinventing everything (thus lacking legacy knowledge) and not fixing things because they don't have the time/manpower for it. A great example of this is Model 3 Suspension failures. The Model 3 upper control arms are known to fail prematurely and seemingly, there is no fix. By all means, this is an extremely dangerous failure that can cause loss of vehicle control.
Germany has a far more serious inspection process than the US and the result for Tesla is truly a disaster:
https://www.autoevolution.com/news/tesla-model-3-is-the-car-...
> Tesla's reliability scores have always been pure and utter trash.
Linked article is literally reliability score that puts them dead center in the middle of the pack.
I'm amazed at the investment people have on arguments about Tesla, and this particular canard especially. I mean, they're cars? Sometimes they break? But not often? Some other brands are better. But some are worse!
It's a boring story about boring facts. Why is it so important to you (and so many other people) that this be a hyperbolic affront to all humanity and not just... a car company?
Or... that they're improving rapidly and we should celebrate that? Does that spin not work for you?
Look, again: they make cars. Cars are complicated devices and sometimes break. There's some, but not a lot, of variation between individual manufacturers in the frequency with which they break. And that's not very interesting, and doesn't justify the kind of outrage I'm seeing in threads like this.
Whatever has you guys all puffed up about this, it's not genuine concern for poor Tesla owners who spend 15% more time in the shop, or whatever.
> don't see how 'Tesla' is not top of the list here
Tesla owners love their cars. This means they tend to overlook issues others might find unacceptable. If my car just refused to drive until I restarted it a few times, that would be a catastrophic fuckup. But I’ve seen Tesla owners shrug that away.
Which is fine! There have always been legendary cars with notorious maintenance issues. But base reliability matters to most, and it matters to track that neutrally.
Is it fine though? For people to use machines that are known to put others in danger? I'm referring to "FSD" doing absolutely bullshit things like not detecting objects in the way.
I don't own a Tesla, but just from observing them on the road and in the neighbourhood I can tell there are many reliability issues just with the easily observable features:
* Model S third brake light has single LEDs failing one by one
* Model X doors don't open in sub-zero weather, friends of us had an ICE rental car for weeks last winter
* All models, automatic activation of rear driving lights at night does not work
* All models, cruise control or something will sometimes suddenly slam the brakes on wide open road, so you need to keep good distance
* Model 3 and Y automatic high beams / matrix LED don't function correctly at night if the car is dirty, they blind everyone on the road - I will be very surprised if this doesn't trigger a recall soon
* Model X front driving light clusters failing, I've seen several, all on the passenger side
* Model 3 and Y, rear lights plastic cracking like it's a 1980s Hyundai
> Model 3 and Y automatic high beams / matrix LED don't function correctly at night if the car is dirty, they blind everyone on the road - I will be very surprised if this doesn't trigger a recall soon
Is that what that is? I thought it was my eyes getting older when thinking car headlights are brighter at night than they used to be. We live in an area with a high % of Teslas on the road and this could explain a lot.
Well, yes and no. The first development which is more than ten years old at this point, was to have projector xenon lights that are veery bright below a sharp line. That line is supposed to be kept below eye level of oncoming traffic, and there is a sensor that adjusts the line height. In Europe there is also a requirement to have washers on the headlights if you have this. The system kind of works fine, except when it doesn't, for instance when driving over a curved hill where it cannot work due to geometry, or when a sensor fails.
Then in the past 3-4 years, matrix LED lights became popular, where you have an array of LEDs with narrow beam optics that are aimed in a slight spread, so that each LED covers a specific area of the road ahead. Then there is a sensor that detects oncoming traffic, and dims the one or two LEDs that point towards those cars.
On the Model 3 and Y there seems to be a particularly frequent failure mode with the matrix LED where the lights, or sometimes just one of them, doesn't detect oncoming traffic at all. It also occurs when they are driving behind someone.
Couple of weeks ago I was behind such a Tesla at night, and I had to just let him get far in front of me, because he kept getting blinked at with the ultra-powered high beams of every oncoming semi trailer. Of course the poor driver couldn't do a thing about it.
Well, - frozen doors, LEDs failing, misaligned headlights, radar/camera cruise control suddenly braking for no reason - there are all pretty common and happen to all cars, not just Teslas.
It's nice and slightly surprising to see something somewhat made in Britain up there in reliability. I know BMW own it but a lot are still made outside Oxford.
Yes, but mini cars only cover the lower and cheapest segment of the market, that is the UKL platform that BMW only uses for the X1, X2, 1 series and 2 series GC.
So probably the highest complexity of the more premium platforms and features is bringing the reliability down for BMW, unsurprisingly (a v8 engine probably would fail earlier than a simple 3-cylinder engine)
It's incredible how the Japanese carmakers were able to perfect the auto manufacturing process and then proceed to hold that advantage for what, 30+ years now? It's not a secret how they did it, it's been studied to death, every manner of technology/expertise/management transfer has been tried, and still no one comes quite close enough to threaten their position.
I assume it’s because the other nations’ automakers would rather compete along other lines. The Japanese already locked onto reliability/quality, so rather than try to fight them on something they are already good at, they try to optimize for style/status/performance/patriotism/etc.
Maybe they are too stubborn to succumb to 'the race to the bottom' cost (and correspondingly quality) wise, since these things do bite back after longer time than current year exec bonuses materialize.
Or maybe they have different approach to beta testing, see say Zelda come out basically flawless and how say Betshesda or many others can deliver their stuff (beta testing months after release with fixes have 1000+ rather basic items).
To be fair, exactly that level of investment in process and conservatism around change is arguably what led them all (literally every single Japanese manufacturer) to miss the boat on EVs.
Basically, getting to your last sentence: you have the wrong threat model. Making "cars better" is great if what a "car" is doesn't change. But what the market wants is "better cars".
I'd hold off on declaring that the EV boat has departed. It remains to be seen at what level EV uptake will plateau, without major advances in battery tech and EV practicality. Coming from a rather nippy Canadian city which bought a bunch of electric buses, fucked up badly[0] and probably made purchasing more electric buses an untenable proposition for (conservatively) 5-7 years, and having heard from multiple EV owners about the less glamorous aspects of EV ownership in Canada (charging cost/duration/convenience, battery performance in cold weather, skyrocketing insurance and repair costs)... The boat, far from being missed, is still in the dry dock.
Not interested in EV flamery. My point was economic: clearly EVs are a very large new market segment, and Japanese brands aren't competing there at all. That's bad, if your business is to sell cars.
It's really bad if you have a sub-brand, like "Hybrids", which has been completely decimated by the (again very real, even if you don't think anyone in Edmonton should buy them) move to electric devices in the market.
Basically: 8 years ago Toyota owned the "ecologically sensitive car buyer" market. And now you might as well flush the Prius brand in the toilet, no one wants them and selling them as "green" relative to a Tesla is a joke.
I think I’m going with this as a car owner and buyer I would be very reluctant to switch back from an EV. It’s just for me so much nicer and more convenient. I have a few friends who share the same sentiment. It’s a category change and the Japanese automakers (to which I have great affinity) aren’t in the category so there’s nothing for me to buy from them.
A quick google tells me Prius family sales were down 37% YoY in 2022. In point of fact that's a little over three "decimations". Not sure what you're citing, but I stand by what I wrote. The Prius brand went from market-leading to trash in the space of a few years as EVs, and Tesla in particular, took over mindshare.
"Sales of Toyota’s conventional hybrids rose 41% from a year ago, to about 888,000, and sales of its plug-in hybrids were up nearly 90% year-over-year to roughly 39,000."
I said "Prius", and was correct. Toyota as a company is doing fine. Toyota is matching up very poorly with Tesla (and frankly even VW or Ford) in the markets where they compete with EVs.
Sure, but none that compete with an EV. Can you name a hybrid vehicle from any manufacturer that matches up with a Model 3 or Y that isn't shrinking rapidly in market share? I'm amazed that people are trying to argue this point. It seems extraordinarily clear just anecdotally (count all the new Teslas around you!), and the data backs it up.
I'm amazed that you're trying to argue the point contrary to actual sales data. The Toyota RAV4 hybrid is growing market share for one. You can find plenty of other examples if you bother to look.
Which Tesla model does the RAV4 compete with? No one sells an EV jeep. Can you cite me even one crossover or sedan hybrid that is growing in sales? Even one? You can't, because EVs are destroying that sector.
The Toyota RAV4 hybrid is a crossover which is growing in sales and competes against the Tesla Model Y. As for Jeep, the Wrangler 4xe hybrid is also growing in sales.
Instead of making up nonsense you could just look at the actual sales numbers. Most manufacturers issue news releases with sales volumes broken down by model.
Every single Japanese manufacturer? Nissan has been and is doing great with the Leaf. They discontinued recently, but only to replace it with a new EV, not because it was doing badly.
If you look at numbers from a couple years ago compared to now, most of the other manufacturers are way up, whereas Nissan almost looks like they've already plateaued.
I'll admit that "doing great" is open to interpretation, but my point is that Nissan hasn't "missed the boat" due to conservatism. They've had a nice, reliable EV available for a decade now, and you can go out and buy one today. Maybe they'll fall off the boat due to mistakes made now, but they've been on the boat for quite some time.
Having a nice reliable product available for sale while your competition rolls out superior products and not doing anything about it is pretty much the definition of "missing the boat due to conservatism", no?
The first time the U.S. tried to study this, they asked for a sample of parts, specifying a precision range, noting that it was acceptable for up to 10% of the parts to be at the extremes of said range.
The Japanese company sent them 3 bags of parts noting: The bag with the full quantity is made to match the provided blueprint, the other two bags contain 1/10th as many parts which are either larger or smaller as requested. May we ask what the purpose of these other parts is?
When they started measuring the parts, they were all identical --- part-way through, they decided that their micrometer must be broken and sent for another --- it revealed that all parts where _exactly_ the right size per the specifications of the drawing.
I've heard this story ever since I was a kid, but never been able to find a credible source. I'm compelled to believe it's no more than a story, at this point.
It was in an audiobook narrated by Pat Morita that I heard it.
The context was auto transmissions --- it was found that one source of premature failures was when all parts in a transmission were at the extreme of too small or too large --- on average, the large/small would balance out, but when it didn't that was when there were early (and catastrophic) failures.
Yes... a lot of people (Americans I guess since I'm American and that's where my anecdotal evidence comes from) think the Japanese are very efficient. They might be in somethings, but their true love is perfection. They love doing things right. Big things, little things... it's a country-wide obsession.
I live in Japan and let me tell you that the Japanese being perfectionists is also a myth. What Japanese people are really good at is following instructions and procedures, to the point that you see their minds crashing when something goes out of script. Now, whether the procedure makes sense and will result in a good outcome or not is a completely different matter...
hmmm.. I think we're both right here. I lived in a Japan for several years and saw a similar thing that you're pointing out, but I don't think the obsession with perfectionism is a myth.
<bad timing to post this given the current thing> but isreal seems to match japan's singlethreadedness in a single area. Some very high tech startups came out of isreal (waze etc) especially along the maps/routing domain.
Because it requires a populace who culturally fixates on quality.
It doesn’t mean a thing to have a “stop everything” lever if your workforce doesn’t want to pull it because they don’t give a flying fuck if they ship a shoddy car.
It’s a story told again and again with tons of Japanese products.
I just don't like any model of Japanese cars... they don't drive, look, or feel as good as a high end European car. But man do I wish European cars were half as reliable as Japanese cars. Driving European cars is a hobby for me, but spending every weekend to keep them working gets old sometimes.
What's especially annoying is that the high end European cars are ostensibly better made... much more expensive materials, more attention to detail (better rustproofing, cable organization, etc.). They probably actually last longer on average if you maintain them well, but they just have unexpected parts failures extremely often.
Looking at how big a problem with rust Mercedes have I'm not sure the "better rust proofing" is based in reality. Definitely doubt it when compared to a Toyota.
Mercedes are not, but many high end European cars dip galvanize the entire chassis, making them virtually rustproof. Volvo started doing this on the 700 series in the 80s and those cars are still driving around in the rust belt fully functional 40 years later! VW, Audi, and Porsche also fully galvanized a lot of cars, but you need to research to figure out what specific years and models.
Mercedes was a global leader in quality until about the early 90s, but the quality really dropped off, and is markedly lower than other German cars nowadays.
Drive and inspect an expensive early 2000s Mercedes, and then a cheap VW Jetta from the same time period… there is no doubt about it, the cheap VW is a higher quality car in every way. Every bolt and fastener is high grade steel, plated with a corrosion preventative , and then also coated with threadlocker that also protects from corrosion. VW then cut quality also around 2011 or so.
So it’s not really cut and dry, you have to look at how each specific car was actually made.
I’d love to see a comparison / breakdown of models made in Japan vs made in USA/Mexico/Canada (for the NA market). Some of the most common Lexus models are not made in Japan
No. They certainly have partnerships on specific models (Subaru BRZ / Scion FR-S / Toyota 86, Subaru Solterra EV / Toyota bZ4X), but they are not exclusive, and each have their own platforms and powertrains for most of their models.
Toyota has partnered with Mazda as well - for example, there was Mazda 2 rebadged as a Toyota Yaris for a few years.
Just one data point, someone I know sells cars and told me that the old Renault duster was based on a Nissan car but the new model is based on a Dacia car and it sucks.
In Europe it has always been known as Dacia Duster.
Dacia in Europe is the "low cost brand" of Renault and to keep cost low they reuse components and parts already developed for previous Nissan and Renault models.
Other manufacturers do the same or share components, for example
the 1500cc Renault diesel engine used in the previous generation of Dacia Duster was also the same used in the Mercedes Class A.
As a person who is both tall and fat, I've been astounded by Japanese cars. By "tall" I don't mean basketball player tall. I just mean around maybe 85 or 90th percentile tall for US men, about 6'1" (73 inches or 185 cm).
When my Nissan Sentra got totaled by a drunk driver I looked at all the similar cars from both American and Japanese companies. The first thing I noticed was that the Japanese cars were comfortable--I had plenty of leg room, by head didn't hit the roof, the seats weren't too narrow, and the steering wheel wasn't too close.
The American cars were all more cramped. And I don't mean cramped just in ways that I could fix if I would have just got my act together and lost weight. No, they were also cramped because I was too tall for them.
I even took a look at American mid-sized cars and they too were apparently not meant for people over 6 ft.
It was kind of funny. The Japanese are a relatively small people. I'd be around 97th percentile on height there. So how come they are so much better at making cars that accommodate tall people?
Anyway, I ended up with a Honda Civic. 11 years later it developed a problem that my local dealer (Seattle Honda) just could not reproduce or diagnose from my description and it was again time for a new car. (From later discussion on a car forum on the net, it seems like the problem was a bad ECU).
That was around when SUVs were getting really popular, and I decided to have a look. Again, Japan for the win. Even though the American SUVs I looked at were overall much bigger cars than the Honda CR-V, only the CR-V had the head and leg room I needed.
I ended up with a CR-V. That worked so well that when that lease was up I leased another, and then another when that lease was up. Then I remembered that I had only leased that first one so that if I didn't like the form factor it would be easy to switch back to a sedan, and so when that third lease was up bought a new 2006 CR-V and still drive that now.
I’ve been driving my Toyota Tacoma for 22 years now and currently at 245k miles (with some off-roading thrown in there). With regular upkeep, it’s amazing how much abuse these can take and still run fine. I haven’t had any major problems. My next car will definitely be a Toyota.
I'll be disappointed if I don't get half-a-million miles out of my '01 Tacoma. The major-est piece of equipment I've had to replace was the power steering pump, and the biggest PITA was the timing belt, which didn't need to be replaced at the time, but I did it for preventative maintenance. 326k miles.
Anecdotally, my wife has owned her Toyota Celica since new in 2002. In that time, other than oil changes / tires / brake pads, the only thing that has failed is an air conditioning relay, twice. The second time around there was a new improved replacement part number, which has worked fine for 10 years now.
I also have an Audi A4 and S4. Something is always breaking on them, but they are very enjoyable to drive compared to the Celica. It has such terrible torque steer that we avoid driving it in any kind of rain. With an open diff, it's essentially a one wheel drive vehicle on any kind of low traction surface. Specifically, the front left wheel.
There is also the Crosstrek and there are talks to intensify the collaboration even further. The obvious difference in size is possibly going to cause some problems, and Daihatsu, another one of those collaborations is a guide to how that could play out.
Subaru has a ton of engine and 4WD knowledge that would benefit Toyota, the other way around, Toyota has economies of scale and hybrid knowledge that Subaru will likely never have so both come out ahead of a partnership like this and the signs are that they are drawing closer to each other. Toyota has steadily expanded their stake in Subaru which today stands at 20%, and Subaru is now officially a part of the Toyota group.
Horizontally opposed engines are inherently less reliable due to the increase in components, an H-4 has two heads and all that entails, an I-4 has one.
CVTs are inherently more fragile than a geared transmission, they simply cannot hold as much torque.
Almost all Subarus sold in the last 3 years have these engines and transmissions and they still hang.
There's also whether people ignore warning signs or not.
I previously had a long-term rented Ford Focus via Canvas (which is no longer around). There were lots of issues with it. A bumper valence that had some screw holes that had expanded and would fall off if only 1 additional screw failed. They were unwilling to fix it, and it did in fact fall off on the highway later due to their unwillingness. Tire treads had almost worn bald, they were also unwilling to fix it until a flat actually happened. Car idled at high RPM, I told them about it, they were unwilling to do anything about it, and the engine started stalling on the highway a few months later.
Almost every single problem with the car had a warning sign that I had told them well in advance, but they were always unwilling to do anything about it.
If you do your due diligence by taking action at every warning sign (strange noise, RPMs not the usual value, etc.) a LOT of "reliability" issues would not happen in the first place. A car is a fast-moving piece of mechanical equipment and needs regular servicing.
Don't do what doctors do and "wait till shit happens" to diagnose you so that they can make a buck off of you in the hospital. Prevent shit.
True, but the people who ignore warnings on VWs also ignore them on Toyotas, and yet Toyota still consistently comes in ahead.
I do think there are cultural issues though with the US vs Europe. It's very common that cars that are known for quality and reliability in Europe are regarded as exceptionally temperamental in the US. When I first moved to the US I couldn't understand why German cars had such a bad reputation for reliability here. Most of them are traditionally considered more or less bulletproof in Europe.
But after while I noticed that many American owners don't pay any attention to maintenance schedules, and just wait until something breaks. Some cars are forgiving of that, and some aren't.
Nowadays I rank cars into roughly 3 categories: those that hardly ever break no matter what you do, those that are fine if you do what you're told, and those that break no matter what you do.
My girlfriend bought her Toyota corolla for 5000 bucks some time ago, old, used, and soon started showing engine warn sign. Pretty bad if you ask me. Yet that light never manifested into anything real, 80k+ km down the road, still works reliably (technician couldn't find anything and just resetting it soon brought it back).
I always wondered how "self-fulfilling" that is with Toyotas/Lexus. If you buy a Toyota for reliability, and intend to keep it, you're probably taking better care of it (both in terms of service and driving habits) than if you were to lease a "fun vehicle" for 3 years.
That said, Toyota does often decide to go for reliability over other measures like fuel economy or power in eg their engines. Some of the older Toyota engines used twice as many bearings as other engines for example, downside being extra drag and lower fuel economy.
To pick a random example, I just saw one saying tesla touch screens overheat, leading glue to leak inwards into the screen and making them unresponsive. Are you saying this isn't true then?
Even Uncle Bob is correct some of the time. My point being that media over sensationalizes issues and that basing your view on reality through their port window is risky.
As a Tesla owner I was surprised they're that low. I know probably 30 owners and haven't heard of any maintenance outside of tires and a few panel gaps at delivery.
I’m perennially baffled by CR’s ratings. They are a lagging indicator at best, and skewed/biased at worst. Does anyone actually use this information any more?
It's a lagging indicator - based on past manufacturing, past purchases, past support practices. This is unescapable, but when I buy cars (and stocks) the past is not a reliable indicator of future performance.
It's flawed/biased - the rankings are based on "member" surveys, which makes the sample biased (likely not representative of all car buyers, CR has never attempted to prove it is as far as I know), which is a flaw if you're using it to make (large financial) decisions. Using surveys rather than evidence is perhaps a more fundamental problem. Essentially this "ranking" is of the perception of quality among a subset of people rather than a serious, quantitative ranking.
Maybe something changed? Subarus used to suffer head gasket failures, and still suffer from this reputation despite the fact that it’s been fixed for nearly two decades.
I don't know about Mini, but I hope the new VWs are better than my experience.
My VW is admittedly 10 years old, and still under the Dieselgate warranty, but I've averaged 2 warranty repairs per oil change interval for 3 years now.
They haven't been able to figure out the cranks forever but does not start for those 3 years, two dealerships have tried now.
They are fairly expensive trips I'm glad to have warranty on. EGR, DPF, 4 sensors in one trip, etc. I'm almost to a new exhaust system and the CEL is on again.
Wish me luck! I went back and forth to the dealership 7 times before they put it back together right last time.
If that's the experience, count me out. It's the last one.
It's almost like the methodology is borderline pseudo-science. Many choices are irrational and unexplained. Several key models are missing from each brand's lineup. Tacoma? Ranger? They have Tundra and F-150...
My understanding is that the initial Mini models were made with Peugeot engines, which were underpowered and pretty unreliable. At some point BMW switched Minis over to use a Beemer engine, at which point quality improved dramatically. Mini has been on an upward trend since (as has BMW).
Anecdotally, someone in my family has a Mini with the BMW engine, and it’s been ticking along just fine. Maintenance is expensive though.
From my years at a major car supplier I know that Toyota was never interested in our latest developments, even if we offered them at a cheaper prize. They only purchased components that had been in use for other cars.
I own a Toyota Avensis. It is the most boring car in the world, but I never ever had any issues with it. Mine is the second facelift, built in 2015, based on a chassis that had been in production since 2009. So any early problems have been resolved long time ago.
Maybe this explains a bit why Toyota is on top in the reliability ranking. They are very reasonable cars. Would I buy one if I had more money? Hell, no!
> Maybe this explains a bit why Toyota is on top in the reliability ranking. They are very reasonable cars. Would I buy one if I had more money? Hell, no!
Maybe if you pay enough for the car that dealer service drops off a loaner, picks up your car, then drops off your car and picks up the loaner with minimal interaction, a less reliable car is fine. Or if you have a useful car and a fun car, the fun car doesn't have to work all the time. Otherwise, having a car that just works is worth a lot.
I've been asked a few times "what car would you buy?" and my answer is always something along the lines of "if you need to ask, you shouldn't buy a car that I'd buy".
Why don't I own a Toyota? Because they're boring. Boring is actually what most people are looking for in a car.
I need a little excitement in my commute. Maybe something starts spraying. Maybe something starts smoking. Maybe something falls off.
Does this account for driving habits? I’ve just purchased a Subaru WRX, and I can’t fight the feeling that the reliability score is in some way influenced by the hoards of idiots that flock to this car for its tuning and hooning potential.
Yeah there’s certainly a temptation there if you’re into working in cars. Alongside your tuning/hooning remark - some cars certainly attract a particular kind of audience, although if it was really hoards, they would have probably released an STI variant for the new body :(
> they would have probably released an STI variant for the new body :(
Pow, right in the feels :’)
But in reality, I suspect this has more to do with the following two things:
1. The STi package has always had abysmal fuel economy, and I believe there are regulations that enforce an average fuel economy across an entire manufacturers fleet
2. Many (most?) of the modders and hooners are put off by the price. In fact, most aren’t really interested in a track car, but rather in a cheap, fast box to drag race between traffic lights.
P.s. the new BRZ might also be stealing a bit of the market, despite the reverse-Zoolander issue it faces with oil pressure…
Yeah the fuel economy is definitely not a selling point even on the standard WRX. Couple that with a strange urge to engage in spirited driving and you’ll be getting your mpgs down to the teens or low twenties.
Re 1: I really hope they bring out a refreshed version, but I have a feeling that may not happen for a while… at least while batteries weigh what they do. Maybe a full EV version some day?
Re 2: yeah the STi was hardly affordable to (my guess) the majority of the crowd that’s into them.
I should have snagged an STi instead of the standard WRX when I had the chance. I love my wrx though, so much fun to drive.
Are you modded or tuned at all? I've admittedly fallen into that rabbit hole, and been steadily getting drawn into mechanical engineering. The WRX is such an easy platform to hack on, it's crazy. It's right up there with the Miata, it seems.
I haven’t added any mods to this car just yet. Wanted to pay it off and not worry about voiding any warranties, but I’m itching to get to it. My previous car was an ‘86 e28 (528e) and I spent many hours working on restoring it, I even chipped it haha. I also had a 2016 fiesta st (fwd isn’t all that bad after all!) I can’t tell you how many hours I spent looking for a good 70s 2002, for a nice e30, for a clean Miata, before deciding to get the WRX. I just wish factory FA20F had the same purr as the EJ models did.
After they fixed the head gasket issues of the 2000s or so, they seem to be fine? My partner, myself, most of my friends, and may of my coworkers, and much of my town drives them. They're insanely popular in outdoorsy and snowy areas. The article scores them decently high in reliability too.
I'd never get a WRX though.
Build quality and ride comfort though, not so much. They're rough and tumble machines, not luxury sedans (well, the Legacy is nice enough, not seems silly to get that over a Toyota).
Speaking of Toyota, they own part of Subaru anyway and have collaborated with them on a few dual-branded vehicles.
I've had a half dozen or so Subaru's and have had little trouble with any of them. Currently we have a '17 Forester we bought new currently with 120k miles on it and just last week I picked up a used '21 Ascent.
The Forester has been though two batteries and just last week I had a wheel bearing in the rear replaced. No other trouble and still runs fine.
I got the Ascent to keep out in Seattle and that'll be my car there -- it'll fit right in -- Subaru seems to make up about 30% of cars in the Seattle area.
It's worth noting that as of 2020, Subaru is running an entirely new platform for their cars, and it has been remarkably solid. The FA24 engine, in particular, appears to be running unusually generous tolerances for things like cylinder pressure, oil pressure, manifold pressure/temps, etc.
For tuners it's been a box of wonders. For ordinary consumers, that maps directly to reliability.
If you google around, you'll see mention of head gasket problems in association with Subaru. This issue has been resolved for the better part of 20 years. Today, the intersection of people who blow up Subaru engines and people who drive like drunk, teenage morons is effectively a perfect circle.
I had a WRX into the late 2000s before it got totaled parked in front of the house. At the time, it had 130,000+ miles (mostly highway miles) and it felt like it had *at least* 2 or 3 more solid years in it. Even the clutch feel fine. What I got from the insurance company didn't come close to the value of that car to me.
I replaced it with a KIA Soul. At the time, the price / value made sense. It was an unplanned expense and I just didn't have time to shop around. It's was buy or die! :) The Soul is still going but it's been it the shop for various issues much more than the WRX ever was.
It's certainly related when you consider Pickup Trucks and the more "sporty" or "outdoorsy" SUV's. People that drive pickups, at least a substantial lot, do manual labor for a living. They're rough on their vehicles. And people doing outdoorsy stuff with SUV's are putting them in harsher conditions than just driving to work and the grocery store.
That said - if my assertion is true, the Tacoma is truly a wonder with its reliability and so on. No surprise given it is the mobility platform of choice in Mid-East and Africa for militias and local armies (i.e. Toyota Hilux).
Not understanding the haterade with Minis. I’ve owned mine since 2015 and I’ve had no major issues. The engine is snappy, it handles great in cornering, easy to park, etc etc.
What a disaster for VW and Mercedes, but it pretty much confirms what everyone here in Germany is saying: reliability has gone downhill, with exception of BMW and Porsche (but it'll cost you), whereas Japan is at the top for ages, with South Korea (Kia, Hyundai) providing a good, cheaper alternative.
Also, you go for Audi (standard models) mainly for how chassis is modeled (aka looks), internals of VW conglomerate are almost identical to cheaper VW or sometimes also Skoda or Seat.
Interestingly, one of my colleague's worst car experience was Audi, not sure if A1 or A2, but he was very disappointed how unreliable it was. Case point 1.
5 year old A5 here and it's an excellent car. didn't go for any bigger engine etc. Close friends have a Q5 and it's got bugs galore. Seems kind of random.
Something that not a lot of people are mentioning is that north american made VAG (vw, audi, etc) cars are made in factories that have shown much less reliability. Everybody in Europe praises VW for how affordable and reliable they are (since they're made in-house in Germany for the most part) - excluding the 2009-2014 years since they had quite a bad Golf line in terms of reliability
After your 3/5-year warranty at BMW you can maintain your BMW at your local workshop, and the costs are similar to other cars. They are not expensive cars to maintain, specially the latest models (F-series, G-series).
I think this is more likely to be the case that Hybrids are dominated by Toyota/Lexus. See:
> Overall, hybrids have 26 percent fewer problems than cars powered by internal combustion engines (ICE). Some standouts include the Lexus UX and NX Hybrid and the Toyota Camry Hybrid, Highlander Hybrid, and RAV4 Hybrid.
and:
> Plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs)... have 146 percent more problems than ICE vehicles. Still, there are PHEVs that buck that trend, including standouts such as the Toyota RAV4 Prime
> The paradox is that hybrids have MORE potential trouble areas than ICE but less reported trouble.
> All hail McLuhan.
That doesn't seem paradoxical, I'd never expect that just counting potential trouble areas is the right thing, things can be made more reliable by addition. Make a laptop without a battery and I'm gonna report a lot of problems stemming from sudden power loss. Put a battery in, that's a new potential trouble area, but even if I still use it plugged in exclusively, I'm gonna report fewer problems since I'll never have sudden power loss and have no problems downstream of that.
Maybe that's not the case with hybrids? I don't know, but it seems like it could be - any time some of the load is taken off some of the most physical components, the ICE and the brakes, it could improve reliability even though the systems taking the load off can then also have problems.
I spent some time looking at this and it depends which hybrid, there is quite a bit of variation in drivetrains even within manufacturers. As sibling comment [1] describes the planetary gear arrangement in most Toyotas is quite simple compared to a normal automatic transmission, and the traction motor/generator replaces both the starter motor and alternator that a plain ICE engine would have. At the same time the hybrid system makes gentler use of the gas engine and brakes so even though they are mechanically near identical to the ICE model they will probably last a lot longer.
I wonder if hybrid being more reliable than gasoline cars is simply a function of most of those being Toyota, versus any effect stemming from the car being Hybrid.
I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s a component. But I would be surprised if that’s a primary reason.
There’s just a lot more to go wrong with an ICE vehicle. You need oil and regular oil changes. A radiator, tubing, and antifreeze. An alternator. A carburetor and a catalytic converter. Timing belts. A exhaust system. None of this (as far as I know, IANAM) is needed for an electric vehicle.
A disproportionate amount of what’s under the hood of an ICE has to do with managing the consequences of the “C” component of that acronym (heat, combustion gases, electricity generation, lubrication, carbon deposits).
You may have misread the parent comment, which talked about HYBRID vehicles being more reliable than ICE-only vehicles. Hybrid vehicles include all of the comments of an ICE vehicle, plus they have electric batteries and motors, and may have a system of transferring power from either system to the wheels. Overall they have higher complexity than either ICE or electric-only vehicles.
They have higher complexity, but also more redundancy. Likely neither of the powertrains experiences the same rate of wear and tear as either would experience on ther own.
This is not true, at least for the most popular Toyota hybrid drive train. It's probably got fewer moving parts than the ICE counterpart by virtue of dispensing with the automatic transmission. See sibling comment:
Most of the images there are broken, all I see are some conceptual block diagram type things. Find a teardown of the hybrid unit and compare to a teardown of any automatic, look at the actual internal complexity and moving parts. I was surprised. Here's a video of the P710: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=O61WihMRdjM
I don't think so. You're using two low load, low power systems combined. The least reliable ICE systems almost always correlate to the more powerful ones.
Slightly OT, but I recently found that here in Germany there is a service where you can go to just like to a car wash without making an appointment. They will do the oil change for you within ten minutes or so and you do not even have to get out of your car during that time. This makes oil changes so much less annoying.
Jiffy Lube had 1,000 locations in the U.S. in 1989. According to my experience in the 1990s (limited mostly to the Midwest), quick oil change shops were ubiquitous even in small towns.
I’ve never seen a shop that will let anyone stay in the vehicle while it was being worked on, even for something so simple as an oil change. Where did you find one?
In the US, this is really common. There a few big chains, like Jiffy Lube and Valvoline, but also a lot of local places. Just look for "drive thru oil change" on Google Maps
Hybrid motors take a lot of stress from the ICE during load changes. This makes the ICEs potentially live much longer. A lot of taxis areound here are older hybrid Toyotas. They must have at least 400,000km mileage already.
A taxi driver in Vancouver had a 2004 Prius and drove it 1 million kilometres with only regular maintenance and no failures. Toyota bought it back from him and took it to Japan to study it.
It looks like it wasn't the 1+M km version that they bought back, but the chap was an early adopter of Prius in that taxi role, and they bought back (exchanged?) his first one from 2001:
> For those working on the next generation Prius 2004 model, Grant’s taxi held invaluable information about wear and tear.They struck a deal: Grant sent his 2001 model back to Japan for testing and had a brand new 2003 model delivered.
My Toyota hybrid reliably does not start after 4 weeks not driving. The 12 volt (1 year old) battery is drained too much after such a period of inactivity. I was not expecting this from Toyota, pretty disappointing.
Welcome to the motorcycling world! Today's cars continually start the engine - that's a huge draw. If you're going to leave your car sit more than a couple weeks then you should put your battery on a tender. Motorcyclists have been doing that for decades.
Yeah, I (not really) joke that everything on the hill gets plugged in. It makes life a lot easier.
Even with no idle draw, lead acid batteries self discharge over time. Life got way easier when I just accepted it, and now I've got a pile of 6V/12V battery tenders that go into just about everything (I have no shortage of 6V vehicles out here too). That and block heaters. The tractor and truck both appreciate them.
I did some analysis of the Tesla 12V system back in 2016, and I'm amazed the batteries lasted as long as they did with how badly they abused the lead acid battery!
One thing I never understood is why hybrids have the 12 volt battery at all. Couldn't the entertainment system etc be powered from the 200V EV battery (after stepping it down obviously)?
Everything on the 12V system essentially is powered from the traction battery (the big one that can power the motors), once the car is turned on.
In Toyota, at least, the traction battery is completely disconnected (via a relay) when the car is off. The 12V battery is needed to power anything on the 12V system up until the car starts-- that includes the car's computer, which is what (after doing all its self-checks and whatnot) activates that relay and connects the traction battery to everything else in the car.
The traction battery isn't always connected probably mostly for safety reasons (having 400-someodd volts energized across the whole car even when it doesn't need it isn't great), but that also keeps it from getting excessively drained if something in the car malfunctions. It's pretty cheap to replace a 12V lead-acid battery if it's overdischarged after you left the lights on... the big hybrid battery, not so much.
Some EVs will monitor the 12V battery and periodically connect the traction battery to the DC-DC converter to maintain the 12V battery when the car is parked for an extended period of time. (On the older Smart EVs, this doesn’t have a limit, so the traction battery will kill itself trying to maintain a weak 12V battery. There’s a firmware patch for it.)
My Kia EV6 does that, and when the 800V battery pack is charging the 12V battery while parked, an orange light on top of the dashboard goes on.
This had me worried the first few times it happened. Then I found out it is a warning to mechanics/tow truck drivers/first responders that the high voltage system is energized.
The light is on top of the dashboard, right in the middle. It's intended to be very visible, especially from outside the car.
It is only on if the car is turned off and parked and the high voltage system has turned on to charge the 12V battery. When you're driving or just have turned on the car while parked, the light goes off.
So the only occasion the light might be annoying is if you're taking a nap in the car at night. And then you could just throw a towel on top of it.
You expect to have the high voltage system energized when driving, otherwise the car wouldn't go anywhere. There would be no purpose for this light to go on.
The light is specifically to indicate that the high voltage system is on when the car is parked. It's a safety warning for that situation.
Because they want to completely disconnected the big battery when not in use to prevent phantom drain, and you need a little power to run passive systems that need to be on still (like remote keys etc).
Some EVs like Tesla now use a separate lithium ion 12v battery that should last forever, instead of a lead acid 12v battery with a limited life span.
No. Or, at least, not easily. The high voltage battery isn't generally connected until "the computers are happy" with the state of things, for various hybrids/EVs/etc.
There's also a legal requirement that "marker lights and such" still work (presumably, also power locks and such) after a prime mover failure. Basically, if the engine quits, you should still be able to signal, get over, turn your 4-ways on, etc.
The easiest solution is to just put a lead acid 12V battery in the car for that. Lithium, in particular, is a problem below freezing because you can't safely charge it, whereas lead doesn't have that problem.
There's a lot of Tier 3 supplier…stuff…in a car that was architected for 1978 and has never had a thorough re-think, because the profit margin is like nothing.
12v is such a common top-rail voltage for electronics of all kinds, I think its a bit more that than "car makers are too greedy to manufacture 400v headlights."
Even if they don’t have a 12v battery they still have to have a 12v system for reasons others mentioned and because it’s a requirement to sell cars in the USA. My Porsche Taycan has jump start lugs for the benefit of other cars and so I can have my low voltage systems operate with some help from another car.
My mild hybrid Audi is the same way. Gas engine, 48v accessory belt run battery, and that 48v battery works in tandem with a small 12v battery for the low voltage system.
Happened to my wife's ex-Toyota CHR hybrid (not plug-in hybrid) after 5 weeks of vacation. I hooked a CTEK charger to it for 8 to 12 hours and all was good again. I didn't leave the car on the CTEK charger for five weeks because it was parked outside and not at our place.
Otherwise CTEK chargers are really nice. Certain car brands like Porsche while sell you a "Porsche charger" for two or three times the price but it's just a CTEK charger re-branded with the Porsche logo on it.
If you've got a garage with electricity, it's an option. If you don't want to let the car on the charger during 5 weeks, just connect it as soon as you come back and in a few hours the car is ready.
I have a VW bus that doesn't see a lot of use and with a bit of fiddling it was easy enough to run a (fused) connector to just behind the grill with a little rubber lid to make it waterproof. That allows me to plug in a trickle charger without having to open the hood. That little trick has saved me multiple batteries already.
I could have gone that route but it would require the cable to go into the interior from the outside so that's why I hardwired it to the front. It also helps that I park it with its nose to the garage so the wire is very short and I just let it dangle down when it isn't in use.
My Honda Hybrid is the same way, sometimes I go weeks between drives and if I park it for more than a couple weeks, I plug it into a 12V battery charger to keep the 12V battery topped up.
But I blame the car's smart features (that use the cell modem to allow remote start, etc) rather than it being a hybrid. I suspect that the non-hybrid model would be the same.
My 1991 Honda motorcycle does this too. I can promise you that it has no smart features. It doesn’t even have a fuel pump. Lead acid batteries just don’t have long shelf lives.
Well I get that lead acid batteries experience self discharge, my 2003 era car will go for over a month with around 20% discharge (it'll be around 12.4V), but after 2 or 3 weeks, my 2020 Honda will be at 50% discharge (around 12.0V).
I'd like to think that at some point the parasitic drain devices will shut down before they drain the battery completely, but I've never tested it beyond that point, I always plug in the charger if the car's going to be parked for more than a couple weeks. I installed a charger plug that comes out the front grill so I can plug it into the battery maintainer without even opening the hood.
Lead acid gel batteries hold their charge MUCH better than standard lead acid batteries. The difference is gel lead acid often self-discharge around 1% per month but standard lead acid batteries self-discharge on the order of 10% per month. I only use gel batteries on my small engine equipment like snowmobiles, motorcycles, and snowblower.
> I always plug in the charger if the car's going to be parked for more than a couple weeks.
To this day, since ~1980, I disconnect the +ve battery lead if the cars not going to be used for a few days or parked up in the bush waiting for when we get back from a walk.
Stops parasitic drains and Heisenbug discharges when thermal expansion during a very hot day causes a hard to track short.
My 2019 vehicle's manual explicitly says not to do this, and that if the battery fully discharges you should make a follow-up service appointment to frobnicate the computers. I miss older cars.
This is true of basically every car ever. Lead acid batteries can’t maintain a charge forever. Get a battery tender if you aren’t going to drive for long periods of time. If you only drive once a month do you even need to own a car? Just rent/uber when you occasionally need a car.
I own 3 Kia’s and they all have various problems, including really big problems, but this is an area they got right. On my daily driver, the Kia Niro, it has a battery button that instantly charges the 12v from the HEV battery. I’ve only needed it once, when I left a light on camping, but it was like magic.
Edit: A friend of mine just got a free engine swap for her... 2012-ish Optima. It threw a CEL on the highway, had the appropriate trouble code, and bam, new engine from the dealership when she told them the code.
Is it the stock battery or after-market? Even if you bought it one year ago, when was it filled with acid? Many auto parts stores sell sealed lead-acid batteries as "new" when they've been sitting on the shelf for a year and the clock starts ticking when the acid goes in. You can get higher quality AGM batteries that will last far longer, but know they are quite expensive. Alternatively, you have a parasitic battery drain going on with your car.
A standard hybrid (of the sort that a range of companies make, handwavingly a parallel hybrid with creep capability, which a PHEV is just a supersized version of) eliminates a huge swath of things that go wrong with ICEs.
First and foremost, the transmission replaces the rather staggering pile of complexity of a modern automatic transmission, typically, with "a few motor/generators, some planetary gears, maybe a band that only engages when a motor is already stopped, and some power electronics." Compared to the 9+ speed automatics, this is dramatically simpler. Quite a few hybrids don't even have a mechanical reverse gear, it's just using the electronics for that brief period.
But, beyond that, you generally aren't asking the engine to idle, or to provide "starting torque" for the car - the hybrid system handles that sort of thing well. On at least the Gen 1 Volts, the motor "idles" at about 1200-1300 RPM, vs the ~750 RPM in most other vehicles, because it's almost never needed at low speed (heating in the dead of winter is the one time I notice it). But you don't have low speed, high load operation on the engines (which is a hard regime to operate in), and you don't have rapid speed changes with gear shifts (which is certainly more stressful than smooth speed changes or continuous speed operation).
You have less brake system wear, and... it goes on.
I know there's this popular "Hybrids/PHEVs are the most complicated of both worlds, so they must be the most unreliable of all worlds!" thing going around, but the data is quite clear that they're exceedingly reliable in actual use, and the "most complicated of all worlds" things tends to zoom out far enough to avoid looking at the transmission or engine design at any level of detail.
> "First and foremost, the transmission replaces the rather staggering pile of complexity of a modern automatic transmission, typically, with "a few motor/generators, some planetary gears, maybe a band that only engages when a motor is already stopped, and some power electronics." Compared to the 9+ speed automatics, this is dramatically simpler. Quite a few hybrids don't even have a mechanical reverse gear, it's just using the electronics for that brief period."
There are very few PHEVs that aren't using the same automatic gearbox as the plain-ole ICE model. You are describing the architecture the Prius uses I guess? In almost all cases the manufacturer just wraps a small electric motor around the output shaft of the same automatic gearbox connected to a small battery.
Mazda PHEVs - same auto gearboxes
BMW PHEVs - same auto gearboxes
Volvo PHEVs - same auto gearboxes
Mercedes PHEVs - same auto gearboxes
etc
There are probably some other exceptions i'm missing, but few PHEVs have a custom gearbox. While they may be just as reliable in many cases, they are almost always more complex designs than their ICE variants.
Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV uses a GKN 'multi-mode dedicated hybrid' transmission with some notable differences than a standard auto gearbox.
Some Lexus & Toyota hybrids and PHEVs use the eCVT transmission, which uses 2-3 electric motors inside to adjust torque rather than a belt.
The Subaru Crosstrek PHEV (internationally also called the e-boxer platform for the Forester hybrid) uses a Toyota eCVT variant that also still facilitates symmetrical AWD instead of a separate electrical motor driving the rear axle.
As I said, there are exceptions, but broadly its just slap motors on output shafts. The motor is usually designed to bolt onto an existing automatic transmission housing.
Are you using PHEV as "Plugin Hybrid Electric Vehicle" in the sense of "Has a long range on battery only"?
The ones I'm familiar with (which, admittedly, don't cover the ones you use) are all "parallel drivetrain" sorts of things, with a Prius-type transmission. Though I'm really only familiar with the Prius and Volt type drivetrains.
No - I'm using it in the exact same sense Consumer Reports did here and the car industry at large does - Hybrid cars that have a CCS charging port or similar and can run on electric only propulsion for some period of time. There are far more PHEV models on sale than just the Volt and Prius. If I recall correctly, the Volt isn't even sold anymore.
This is the same definition wikipedia uses too:
"A plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV) is a hybrid electric vehicle whose battery pack can be recharged by plugging a charging cable into an external electric power source, in addition to internally by its on-board internal combustion engine-powered generator."
"There are very few PHEVs that aren't using the same automatic gearbox as the plain-ole ICE model."
Except the most popular hybrid, the prius, which admittedly does t have a non/hybrid counterpart because it was done from the ground up to avoid unnecessary legacy technology
Toyota and US brands tend to adopt Series-Parallel hybrid system. European tend to adopt Parallel hybrid system like you listed, and Mazda/Hyundai want to be like an European. Japanese tend to adopt Series hybrid system.
Series-Parallel and Series hybrid remove transmission so possibly there's an reliability advantage. For Parallel hybrid, it's electric addon so I don't know there are reliability advantage.
> I know there's this popular "Hybrids/PHEVs are the most complicated of both worlds, so they must be the most unreliable of all worlds!" thing going around, but the data is quite clear that they're exceedingly reliable in actual use, and the "most complicated of all worlds" things tends to zoom out far enough to avoid looking at the transmission or engine design at any level of detail.
The article suggests plug-in hybrids are nearly 150% more prone to issues than regular cars though? I mean, I have one, and it seems good so far, but it contradicts your assertions.
Hmm, I don't have the numbers to compare and draw any conclusions, but aren't many (most?) Toyota hybrids using CVT transmissions? The newest Yaris doesn't have a "real" CVT (eCVT with planetary gears instead) but the old one does. Those are not used in the none hybrid Toyotas at all as far as I know. Also CVTs have huge reliability problems, at least in some cars (Honda comes to mind).
I thought maybe it was from mostly keeping the ICE engine in a comfortable power-rpm band, rarely making it lug at low RPM's to get the car going, rarely reving up to high RPM's, and never idling the engine, it's either running under load to charge the battery (or drive the car), or turned off.
BMW got much better since the switch to B series engines, N series era was horrible. Timing chains between the engine and gearbox are a pain point though, they need to be replaced with mileage.
Not all N series engines are awful. The N52, while not as amazing as the previous M52/M54 engines, is a fantastic, reliable engine. However, the 4 cylinder N20 used between 2011-2017 is the worst. Faulty timing chain guides often fail and immediately grenade the engine. They were so bad there was even a class action lawsuit
The N53 is notably one of bmw's less reliable engines. Everything that goes wrong with it is tedious to debug and ends up hugely expensive to fix because you always end up needing to replace several pricey injectors. Then it breaks again later.
The N52 seems rather better, as all its common faults are relatively cheap to fix.
The B58 and B48 are quite impeccably good engines, both in terms of reliability and also performance/response. I had an excellent experience with my B58-powered M240i. I've also never heard anyone needing to do anything in practice with timing chains on these engines, even at high mileage. It seems the whole car would be worn out before the timing chain wears out, provided you use decent quality oil and don't neglect oil changes.
The older N52 engine is also very solid and reliable, my high mileage 2006 330i (E90) has been rock solid reliable in its powertrain.
My mechanic told me the N20 engine is terrible though, he has encountered an absurd number of them failing. The N54 is solid enough mechanically, though they get HPFP issues and need occasional cleaning of soot/gunk from valves.
I'd read that hybrids had better reliability than ICE cars, but from a glance at this data it might just be an artefact of high reliability manufacturers being overrepresented in this market.
Would love to see this scattered against maintenance cost.
Having to take my Subaru in for an oil change every six months is annoying, even if it means I’ve only ever had one serious issue. (Computer flipped out because someone didn’t close the gas cap tightly enough, leading to a service visit requirement, which is absurd.)
I have done my oil changes in the past, and for the recommended oil and filter on my 8 year old Toyota, $50 would cover 5 quarts of oil and a cheap filter. Add in disposal + labor, it's sometimes just easier to pay my local mechanic the $75 for the oil change.
I always get my oil at Costco at 6 quarts for less than $30. I figured mechanic shops are surely buying for less. And oil filters are usually less than $10 for the cheap ones, and maybe $15 for the high end ones. I assume auto shops probably use the cheaper ones. Actually, the reason I do my own oil change is because I can trust Costco/Autozone to sell me good quality oil and oil filter, whereas I don't know what a mechanic would put in, and it only takes me 30min.
I just looked up a local mechanic's website, and they advertise $35 for synthetic blend oil change, and $65 for full synthetic blend oil change (most non european cars). I wonder if they price it to be at cost or even a loss leader.
This article seems quite similar to the one posted two days ago on HN about Brother printers - they're great because they have very low innovation.
The top car brands - Lexus/Toyota, Acura/Honda, Subaru, and Mazda - have been widely scolded for not trying very hard to build EVs and would rather refine the same exact ICE cars for decades.
Subaru and Mazda are fairly small so I wouldn't expect a lot of R&D from them. Toyota has been really successful with hybrid which to me, seem like the best solution until EV range cost, and infrastructure improve.
Those two are weird; they use to have a lot of out-there designs (boxers & rotaries respectively) but seem to have slowed down on the innovation since then.
Mazda engine R&D is seemingly quite impressive: the SkyActive X engine is an unusual ICE gasoline engine that takes ideas from diesel, with greater fuel efficiency and horsepower.
Subaru finally made an EV (the Solterra). I love the way it drives, but it's more expensive (at least at my dealer) than an entry level Tesla. I'd trust Subaru way more than Tesla though.
Mostly because they have a history of dishonesty (like with self driving) and poor build quality. Also I hate their UX, especially that touch screen (I'm old and prefer physical dials and buttons and doorknobs). Don't really want a cool car, just a stable (mechanical) platform for an everyday electric driver with AWD and good clearance.
But Musk doesn't help matters either. I used to really respect him (and still grudingly do, mostly for SpaceX and Starlink), but he seems more and more unhinged over the years. Maybe if he were more hands off Tesla like he was with Starlink? To me Tesla just feels like an edgy image company rather than an old fashioned car company like Subaru. I don't want that whole baggage or culture, I just want a car.
Kudos to Tesla for jumpstarting EVs, but I'd much rather go with the stale Japanese option.
I appreciate data like this because it helps counter the super strongly held opinions most car enthusiasts have about car brands, which generally seem to be based on hearsay and conjecture.
>We weigh the severity of each type of problem to create a predicted reliability score for each vehicle, from 1 to 100.
It bothers me to see a 1 to 100 scale for this - what does the number actually mean in practice? Comparing a score of 80 and a score of 20, does that mean the lower score is likely to need 4x as many trips to the mechanic? 4x as much spent on repairs in a year?
In other words - how big is the gap between first and last place in real-world terms? Presenting the scores this way suggests a huge difference, is that actually the case?
Either way, surprised to see Mini near the top and Mercedes-Benz all the way at the bottom!
> ...what does the number actually mean in practice?
Seemingly very little:
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.
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.)
You can't buy an 'average' Mazda, or an 'average' Mercedes. Each manufacturer has models up and down the reliability curve.
I guess this is interesting, but only actionable info is if you pay for a subscription and look up not just a particular model, but of a particular year and trim
I have never understood how the Consumer Reports model of self(reader)-reported reliability can produce can statistically valid results.
There are many biases build in to self-reporting surveys. Longtime Consumer Reports readers who buy a Toyota because they believe it is the most reliable make want their choice to have been correct. Their answers about problems with their car will reflect that.
CR also uses their own tests and maintenance records.
There are definitely flaws with self reporting but it’s just a data source with its limitations.
Statistical validity is based on what is done with the data, not whether it’s self reported or measured accurately. What you may be thinking of is whether their study or logic is sound.
Data around cars is notoriously complete bullshit. One example is that one of the main metrics used by a very big name, maybe CR, is “reliability compared to *expectations*”. Obviously cars that people have high expectations for (Teslas) are going to score horribly here even if they are objectively more reliable than other brands. And of course they bury this little fact way down in the info and everyone walks away with “welp teslas just fucking break all the time”
The linked article is pretty explicit about how they calculate it. A detailed explanation is literally the first section.
And as they explain, they ask people about the actual problems they've had in the last 12 months with their car; nothing soft or fuzzy or relative to expectations at all.
If I ask you about your experience with a Rolls Royce you'd probably mention in the door rattles a little bit between the speeds of 55 and 60mph. If I ask the same question about an entry level Toyota I doubt people would think anything of it or mention it. This is especially impacted if you're used to buying cars that cost $75k (a lot of Tesla owners) versus used to owning preowned cars bought for $10k
There was a time when CR regularly rated Buick at the top of the charts. At that time, my mom and all her little old lady friends (I'm not using those adjectives lightly) had Buicks and literally used them to drive to Church on Sundays (and occasionally the grocery store, which was about five blocks away). The cars were terrible, but they were treated well.
I wish there was something more objective used like to quantify how many vehicles are still on the road after X number years. I guarantee Toyota/Lexus/Honda/Acura would be at the top if you compared how many vehicles would still be daily drivers after 25+ years and 250,000+ miles.
That, in my opinion, best describes a BMW owner. Is it a more reliable car than Alfa? Well, if you service it at the higher requirement and price that a BMW is most often services at then maybe it is.
1,101 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 427 ms ] threadA car is too complex a thing to be characterized with a single scalar value.
There was a reddit thread this year where someone asked "what brand would you tell everyone to avoid", and it was a pretty unanimous "Toyota wins."
Hopefully they'll quit making infotainment systems. I like my phone->FM adapter.
Edit: I worded my comment poorly. The mechanics all love Toyota. Everything else was on many guys' shit-lists.
Older than I thought, but perhaps I just stumbled across it this year. That's the only one I could find with a big number of comments, like I recall.
Interesting, as I was under the assumption that Toyota and Honda were the cheapest to repair.
But same re. infotainment. I have a suction cup MagSafe charging mount for my 2004 4Runner and I patched a bluetooth receiver into the stock head unit. Nothing better than that glorious amber glow when driving late at night. LCD's are blinding by comparison.
Plus this way I don't ever have to enter the iPhone's crippled CarPlay navigation mode, or really deal with CarPlay ever. I just use the phone the same as any other time, no new UI or "safe driving" features to obstruct me.
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/jbw8i7/mechanics...
Interestingly, on the OP link, they don't list the Tacoma, notoriously one of the most reliable vehicles.
Part of the reason is that Toyota uses really conservative, classic engineering. They sell things that have worked well for decades, and they're hesitant to introduce new features.
That's also why their infotainment systems are notoriously terrible and they lagged years behind everyone else on selling electric cars. Gotta take the good with the bad.
I thought part of that was that they were big believers in hydrogen?
You absolutely can reduce it to a single scalar value. You might personally disagree with the weights, but then your calculation is just a little bit different.
And you have to be able to reduce it to a scalar value at the end of the day, or else you'd never be able to make a decision about which car to buy, because you'd be entirely paralyzed when it came to cost/benefit assessments.
Its like counting number of bugs or lines of codes as metrics
I would expect vastly different results across different drivetrains, and probably even more differences across shape/size platforms (compact, sedan, truck, van, etc.).
https://www.adac.de/rund-ums-fahrzeug/unfall-schaden-panne/a...
Many readers aren't savvy and just want to know what dealership to show up at to start asking what they can afford. If brand XYZ has amazing ICE reliability but their EVs are trash, you suddenly need to be a more informed consumer when you get to that dealership. Easier to just rank the companies with a long history of reliability across multiple product segments higher.
It's especially important to see how they compare given the zealous push for EVs to replace ICE completely.
> Cars, including sedans, hatchbacks, and wagons, remain the most reliable vehicle type, with an average reliability rating of 57 (on a scale of 0 to 100), followed by SUVs (50) and minivans (45). “Sedans have fallen out of favor with consumers, but as a class they are very reliable,” says Jake Fisher, senior director of auto testing at Consumer Reports. “They often have less of the latest technology and features that can cause problems before the bugs are worked out.” Pickup trucks come in last, with an average reliability rating of 41.
That surprises me because I've browsed a lot of use vehicles and it seems to me like pickups can go to way higher miles than cars. I see a lot of them still run fine with 150,000+ miles
Maybe the owners are more willing to pay for major repairs though since getting a new one is so expensive?
For most folks buying a car these days, if they choose EV its not due to environmental concerns, not primarily or secondarily, at least I don't know single one person among EV owners. They just want a reliable car, and 130 years of fine tuning combustion engines can end up more reliable in say 15 years than shiny unproven electric design (single case 1 but I can provide such - my previous bmw e46 vs tesla model s of my colleague, or model 3 of another colleague).
https://www.jdpower.com/business/press-releases/2023-us-vehi...
Linked article is literally reliability score that puts them dead center in the middle of the pack.
I'm amazed at the investment people have on arguments about Tesla, and this particular canard especially. I mean, they're cars? Sometimes they break? But not often? Some other brands are better. But some are worse!
It's a boring story about boring facts. Why is it so important to you (and so many other people) that this be a hyperbolic affront to all humanity and not just... a car company?
Look, again: they make cars. Cars are complicated devices and sometimes break. There's some, but not a lot, of variation between individual manufacturers in the frequency with which they break. And that's not very interesting, and doesn't justify the kind of outrage I'm seeing in threads like this.
Whatever has you guys all puffed up about this, it's not genuine concern for poor Tesla owners who spend 15% more time in the shop, or whatever.
Tesla owners love their cars. This means they tend to overlook issues others might find unacceptable. If my car just refused to drive until I restarted it a few times, that would be a catastrophic fuckup. But I’ve seen Tesla owners shrug that away.
Which is fine! There have always been legendary cars with notorious maintenance issues. But base reliability matters to most, and it matters to track that neutrally.
Did Consumer Reports look at FSD? I don't think optional features like that factor into reliability.
* Model S third brake light has single LEDs failing one by one
* Model X doors don't open in sub-zero weather, friends of us had an ICE rental car for weeks last winter
* All models, automatic activation of rear driving lights at night does not work
* All models, cruise control or something will sometimes suddenly slam the brakes on wide open road, so you need to keep good distance
* Model 3 and Y automatic high beams / matrix LED don't function correctly at night if the car is dirty, they blind everyone on the road - I will be very surprised if this doesn't trigger a recall soon
* Model X front driving light clusters failing, I've seen several, all on the passenger side
* Model 3 and Y, rear lights plastic cracking like it's a 1980s Hyundai
Is that what that is? I thought it was my eyes getting older when thinking car headlights are brighter at night than they used to be. We live in an area with a high % of Teslas on the road and this could explain a lot.
Then in the past 3-4 years, matrix LED lights became popular, where you have an array of LEDs with narrow beam optics that are aimed in a slight spread, so that each LED covers a specific area of the road ahead. Then there is a sensor that detects oncoming traffic, and dims the one or two LEDs that point towards those cars.
On the Model 3 and Y there seems to be a particularly frequent failure mode with the matrix LED where the lights, or sometimes just one of them, doesn't detect oncoming traffic at all. It also occurs when they are driving behind someone.
Couple of weeks ago I was behind such a Tesla at night, and I had to just let him get far in front of me, because he kept getting blinked at with the ultra-powered high beams of every oncoming semi trailer. Of course the poor driver couldn't do a thing about it.
You saw this on all models, on the road and/or in your neighborhood? (I mean surely not, but I'm curious to know how you came to this conclusion.)
1. Toyota
2. Mini
3. Honda
4. Subaru
5. Mazda
Congratulations Japan.
So probably the highest complexity of the more premium platforms and features is bringing the reliability down for BMW, unsurprisingly (a v8 engine probably would fail earlier than a simple 3-cylinder engine)
The hard bit isn't the process per se, it's executing the process when it would otherwise be easier not to.
Or maybe they have different approach to beta testing, see say Zelda come out basically flawless and how say Betshesda or many others can deliver their stuff (beta testing months after release with fixes have 1000+ rather basic items).
Basically, getting to your last sentence: you have the wrong threat model. Making "cars better" is great if what a "car" is doesn't change. But what the market wants is "better cars".
[0] https://edmontonjournal.com/news/local-news/more-than-half-o...
It's really bad if you have a sub-brand, like "Hybrids", which has been completely decimated by the (again very real, even if you don't think anyone in Edmonton should buy them) move to electric devices in the market.
Basically: 8 years ago Toyota owned the "ecologically sensitive car buyer" market. And now you might as well flush the Prius brand in the toilet, no one wants them and selling them as "green" relative to a Tesla is a joke.
"Sales of Toyota’s conventional hybrids rose 41% from a year ago, to about 888,000, and sales of its plug-in hybrids were up nearly 90% year-over-year to roughly 39,000."
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/01/toyota-tm-q3-2023-earnings-g...
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/toyota-motor-north-...
Instead of making up nonsense you could just look at the actual sales numbers. Most manufacturers issue news releases with sales volumes broken down by model.
In Q3 this year, Nissan is in 10th place, with 6000 EV's sold: https://caredge.com/guides/electric-vehicle-market-share-and...
If you look at numbers from a couple years ago compared to now, most of the other manufacturers are way up, whereas Nissan almost looks like they've already plateaued.
Also, apparently the Leaf successor won't go into production until 2026? https://electrek.co/2023/05/19/what-we-know-nissan-leaf-ev-r...
That's crazy if true. What the hell has Nissan been doing?
The Japanese company sent them 3 bags of parts noting: The bag with the full quantity is made to match the provided blueprint, the other two bags contain 1/10th as many parts which are either larger or smaller as requested. May we ask what the purpose of these other parts is?
When they started measuring the parts, they were all identical --- part-way through, they decided that their micrometer must be broken and sent for another --- it revealed that all parts where _exactly_ the right size per the specifications of the drawing.
The context was auto transmissions --- it was found that one source of premature failures was when all parts in a transmission were at the extreme of too small or too large --- on average, the large/small would balance out, but when it didn't that was when there were early (and catastrophic) failures.
It doesn’t mean a thing to have a “stop everything” lever if your workforce doesn’t want to pull it because they don’t give a flying fuck if they ship a shoddy car.
It’s a story told again and again with tons of Japanese products.
What's especially annoying is that the high end European cars are ostensibly better made... much more expensive materials, more attention to detail (better rustproofing, cable organization, etc.). They probably actually last longer on average if you maintain them well, but they just have unexpected parts failures extremely often.
Mercedes was a global leader in quality until about the early 90s, but the quality really dropped off, and is markedly lower than other German cars nowadays. Drive and inspect an expensive early 2000s Mercedes, and then a cheap VW Jetta from the same time period… there is no doubt about it, the cheap VW is a higher quality car in every way. Every bolt and fastener is high grade steel, plated with a corrosion preventative , and then also coated with threadlocker that also protects from corrosion. VW then cut quality also around 2011 or so.
So it’s not really cut and dry, you have to look at how each specific car was actually made.
Toyota has partnered with Mazda as well - for example, there was Mazda 2 rebadged as a Toyota Yaris for a few years.
My family has sworn by Japanese cars since I was a kid, with most of us buying exclusively Honda or Toyota (incl their luxury lines, Acura/Lexus).
When my Nissan Sentra got totaled by a drunk driver I looked at all the similar cars from both American and Japanese companies. The first thing I noticed was that the Japanese cars were comfortable--I had plenty of leg room, by head didn't hit the roof, the seats weren't too narrow, and the steering wheel wasn't too close.
The American cars were all more cramped. And I don't mean cramped just in ways that I could fix if I would have just got my act together and lost weight. No, they were also cramped because I was too tall for them.
I even took a look at American mid-sized cars and they too were apparently not meant for people over 6 ft.
It was kind of funny. The Japanese are a relatively small people. I'd be around 97th percentile on height there. So how come they are so much better at making cars that accommodate tall people?
Anyway, I ended up with a Honda Civic. 11 years later it developed a problem that my local dealer (Seattle Honda) just could not reproduce or diagnose from my description and it was again time for a new car. (From later discussion on a car forum on the net, it seems like the problem was a bad ECU).
That was around when SUVs were getting really popular, and I decided to have a look. Again, Japan for the win. Even though the American SUVs I looked at were overall much bigger cars than the Honda CR-V, only the CR-V had the head and leg room I needed.
I ended up with a CR-V. That worked so well that when that lease was up I leased another, and then another when that lease was up. Then I remembered that I had only leased that first one so that if I didn't like the form factor it would be easy to switch back to a sedan, and so when that third lease was up bought a new 2006 CR-V and still drive that now.
I also have an Audi A4 and S4. Something is always breaking on them, but they are very enjoyable to drive compared to the Celica. It has such terrible torque steer that we avoid driving it in any kind of rain. With an open diff, it's essentially a one wheel drive vehicle on any kind of low traction surface. Specifically, the front left wheel.
Subaru: depending on which model can have a lot of Toyota parts.
Subaru has a ton of engine and 4WD knowledge that would benefit Toyota, the other way around, Toyota has economies of scale and hybrid knowledge that Subaru will likely never have so both come out ahead of a partnership like this and the signs are that they are drawing closer to each other. Toyota has steadily expanded their stake in Subaru which today stands at 20%, and Subaru is now officially a part of the Toyota group.
https://www.torquenews.com/1084/subaru-officially-joins-toyo...
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2013/10/29/consume...
With that sort of handicap it's either a testament to how great Subaru is or how terrible every other automaker is.
CVTs are inherently more fragile than a geared transmission, they simply cannot hold as much torque.
Almost all Subarus sold in the last 3 years have these engines and transmissions and they still hang.
Almost every single problem with the car had a warning sign that I had told them well in advance, but they were always unwilling to do anything about it.
If you do your due diligence by taking action at every warning sign (strange noise, RPMs not the usual value, etc.) a LOT of "reliability" issues would not happen in the first place. A car is a fast-moving piece of mechanical equipment and needs regular servicing.
Don't do what doctors do and "wait till shit happens" to diagnose you so that they can make a buck off of you in the hospital. Prevent shit.
I do think there are cultural issues though with the US vs Europe. It's very common that cars that are known for quality and reliability in Europe are regarded as exceptionally temperamental in the US. When I first moved to the US I couldn't understand why German cars had such a bad reputation for reliability here. Most of them are traditionally considered more or less bulletproof in Europe.
But after while I noticed that many American owners don't pay any attention to maintenance schedules, and just wait until something breaks. Some cars are forgiving of that, and some aren't.
Nowadays I rank cars into roughly 3 categories: those that hardly ever break no matter what you do, those that are fine if you do what you're told, and those that break no matter what you do.
That said, Toyota does often decide to go for reliability over other measures like fuel economy or power in eg their engines. Some of the older Toyota engines used twice as many bearings as other engines for example, downside being extra drag and lower fuel economy.
It's flawed/biased - the rankings are based on "member" surveys, which makes the sample biased (likely not representative of all car buyers, CR has never attempted to prove it is as far as I know), which is a flaw if you're using it to make (large financial) decisions. Using surveys rather than evidence is perhaps a more fundamental problem. Essentially this "ranking" is of the perception of quality among a subset of people rather than a serious, quantitative ranking.
My VW is admittedly 10 years old, and still under the Dieselgate warranty, but I've averaged 2 warranty repairs per oil change interval for 3 years now.
They haven't been able to figure out the cranks forever but does not start for those 3 years, two dealerships have tried now.
They are fairly expensive trips I'm glad to have warranty on. EGR, DPF, 4 sensors in one trip, etc. I'm almost to a new exhaust system and the CEL is on again.
Wish me luck! I went back and forth to the dealership 7 times before they put it back together right last time.
If that's the experience, count me out. It's the last one.
Anecdotally, someone in my family has a Mini with the BMW engine, and it’s been ticking along just fine. Maintenance is expensive though.
I own a Toyota Avensis. It is the most boring car in the world, but I never ever had any issues with it. Mine is the second facelift, built in 2015, based on a chassis that had been in production since 2009. So any early problems have been resolved long time ago.
Maybe this explains a bit why Toyota is on top in the reliability ranking. They are very reasonable cars. Would I buy one if I had more money? Hell, no!
Maybe if you pay enough for the car that dealer service drops off a loaner, picks up your car, then drops off your car and picks up the loaner with minimal interaction, a less reliable car is fine. Or if you have a useful car and a fun car, the fun car doesn't have to work all the time. Otherwise, having a car that just works is worth a lot.
I've been asked a few times "what car would you buy?" and my answer is always something along the lines of "if you need to ask, you shouldn't buy a car that I'd buy".
Why don't I own a Toyota? Because they're boring. Boring is actually what most people are looking for in a car.
I need a little excitement in my commute. Maybe something starts spraying. Maybe something starts smoking. Maybe something falls off.
Pow, right in the feels :’)
But in reality, I suspect this has more to do with the following two things:
1. The STi package has always had abysmal fuel economy, and I believe there are regulations that enforce an average fuel economy across an entire manufacturers fleet
2. Many (most?) of the modders and hooners are put off by the price. In fact, most aren’t really interested in a track car, but rather in a cheap, fast box to drag race between traffic lights.
P.s. the new BRZ might also be stealing a bit of the market, despite the reverse-Zoolander issue it faces with oil pressure…
Re 1: I really hope they bring out a refreshed version, but I have a feeling that may not happen for a while… at least while batteries weigh what they do. Maybe a full EV version some day?
Re 2: yeah the STi was hardly affordable to (my guess) the majority of the crowd that’s into them.
I should have snagged an STi instead of the standard WRX when I had the chance. I love my wrx though, so much fun to drive.
I'd never get a WRX though.
Build quality and ride comfort though, not so much. They're rough and tumble machines, not luxury sedans (well, the Legacy is nice enough, not seems silly to get that over a Toyota).
Speaking of Toyota, they own part of Subaru anyway and have collaborated with them on a few dual-branded vehicles.
The Forester has been though two batteries and just last week I had a wheel bearing in the rear replaced. No other trouble and still runs fine.
I got the Ascent to keep out in Seattle and that'll be my car there -- it'll fit right in -- Subaru seems to make up about 30% of cars in the Seattle area.
I’ll be driving it in snowy conditions in Canada. Ontario , Quebec, and New Brunswick in the dead of winter trips :)
For tuners it's been a box of wonders. For ordinary consumers, that maps directly to reliability.
If you google around, you'll see mention of head gasket problems in association with Subaru. This issue has been resolved for the better part of 20 years. Today, the intersection of people who blow up Subaru engines and people who drive like drunk, teenage morons is effectively a perfect circle.
I replaced it with a KIA Soul. At the time, the price / value made sense. It was an unplanned expense and I just didn't have time to shop around. It's was buy or die! :) The Soul is still going but it's been it the shop for various issues much more than the WRX ever was.
That said - if my assertion is true, the Tacoma is truly a wonder with its reliability and so on. No surprise given it is the mobility platform of choice in Mid-East and Africa for militias and local armies (i.e. Toyota Hilux).
Interestingly, one of my colleague's worst car experience was Audi, not sure if A1 or A2, but he was very disappointed how unreliable it was. Case point 1.
All hail McLuhan.
> Overall, hybrids have 26 percent fewer problems than cars powered by internal combustion engines (ICE). Some standouts include the Lexus UX and NX Hybrid and the Toyota Camry Hybrid, Highlander Hybrid, and RAV4 Hybrid.
and:
> Plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs)... have 146 percent more problems than ICE vehicles. Still, there are PHEVs that buck that trend, including standouts such as the Toyota RAV4 Prime
> All hail McLuhan.
That doesn't seem paradoxical, I'd never expect that just counting potential trouble areas is the right thing, things can be made more reliable by addition. Make a laptop without a battery and I'm gonna report a lot of problems stemming from sudden power loss. Put a battery in, that's a new potential trouble area, but even if I still use it plugged in exclusively, I'm gonna report fewer problems since I'll never have sudden power loss and have no problems downstream of that.
Maybe that's not the case with hybrids? I don't know, but it seems like it could be - any time some of the load is taken off some of the most physical components, the ICE and the brakes, it could improve reliability even though the systems taking the load off can then also have problems.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/windsor/us-electric-vehicles-...
There’s just a lot more to go wrong with an ICE vehicle. You need oil and regular oil changes. A radiator, tubing, and antifreeze. An alternator. A carburetor and a catalytic converter. Timing belts. A exhaust system. None of this (as far as I know, IANAM) is needed for an electric vehicle.
A disproportionate amount of what’s under the hood of an ICE has to do with managing the consequences of the “C” component of that acronym (heat, combustion gases, electricity generation, lubrication, carbon deposits).
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38466406
https://automotorpad.com/toyota/83449-funcionamiento-sistema...
It's essentially an engine, a transmission, another transmission (power split device), a drive motor and a generator.
Slightly OT, but I recently found that here in Germany there is a service where you can go to just like to a car wash without making an appointment. They will do the oil change for you within ten minutes or so and you do not even have to get out of your car during that time. This makes oil changes so much less annoying.
No way I would work on a car with a random member of the public behind the wheel.
They sometimes ask me to remove the keys from the ignition.
It looks like it wasn't the 1+M km version that they bought back, but the chap was an early adopter of Prius in that taxi role, and they bought back (exchanged?) his first one from 2001:
> For those working on the next generation Prius 2004 model, Grant’s taxi held invaluable information about wear and tear.They struck a deal: Grant sent his 2001 model back to Japan for testing and had a brand new 2003 model delivered.
Still excellent story, and good on him!
Even with no idle draw, lead acid batteries self discharge over time. Life got way easier when I just accepted it, and now I've got a pile of 6V/12V battery tenders that go into just about everything (I have no shortage of 6V vehicles out here too). That and block heaters. The tractor and truck both appreciate them.
I did some analysis of the Tesla 12V system back in 2016, and I'm amazed the batteries lasted as long as they did with how badly they abused the lead acid battery!
https://www.sevarg.net/2016/10/30/tesla-model-s-12v-battery-...
In Toyota, at least, the traction battery is completely disconnected (via a relay) when the car is off. The 12V battery is needed to power anything on the 12V system up until the car starts-- that includes the car's computer, which is what (after doing all its self-checks and whatnot) activates that relay and connects the traction battery to everything else in the car.
The traction battery isn't always connected probably mostly for safety reasons (having 400-someodd volts energized across the whole car even when it doesn't need it isn't great), but that also keeps it from getting excessively drained if something in the car malfunctions. It's pretty cheap to replace a 12V lead-acid battery if it's overdischarged after you left the lights on... the big hybrid battery, not so much.
This had me worried the first few times it happened. Then I found out it is a warning to mechanics/tow truck drivers/first responders that the high voltage system is energized.
It is only on if the car is turned off and parked and the high voltage system has turned on to charge the 12V battery. When you're driving or just have turned on the car while parked, the light goes off.
So the only occasion the light might be annoying is if you're taking a nap in the car at night. And then you could just throw a towel on top of it.
You expect to have the high voltage system energized when driving, otherwise the car wouldn't go anywhere. There would be no purpose for this light to go on.
The light is specifically to indicate that the high voltage system is on when the car is parked. It's a safety warning for that situation.
Some EVs like Tesla now use a separate lithium ion 12v battery that should last forever, instead of a lead acid 12v battery with a limited life span.
There's also a legal requirement that "marker lights and such" still work (presumably, also power locks and such) after a prime mover failure. Basically, if the engine quits, you should still be able to signal, get over, turn your 4-ways on, etc.
The easiest solution is to just put a lead acid 12V battery in the car for that. Lithium, in particular, is a problem below freezing because you can't safely charge it, whereas lead doesn't have that problem.
https://www.caranddriver.com/features/a38537243/electric-car...
There's a lot of Tier 3 supplier…stuff…in a car that was architected for 1978 and has never had a thorough re-think, because the profit margin is like nothing.
My mild hybrid Audi is the same way. Gas engine, 48v accessory belt run battery, and that 48v battery works in tandem with a small 12v battery for the low voltage system.
Otherwise CTEK chargers are really nice. Certain car brands like Porsche while sell you a "Porsche charger" for two or three times the price but it's just a CTEK charger re-branded with the Porsche logo on it.
If you've got a garage with electricity, it's an option. If you don't want to let the car on the charger during 5 weeks, just connect it as soon as you come back and in a few hours the car is ready.
But I blame the car's smart features (that use the cell modem to allow remote start, etc) rather than it being a hybrid. I suspect that the non-hybrid model would be the same.
I'd like to think that at some point the parasitic drain devices will shut down before they drain the battery completely, but I've never tested it beyond that point, I always plug in the charger if the car's going to be parked for more than a couple weeks. I installed a charger plug that comes out the front grill so I can plug it into the battery maintainer without even opening the hood.
To this day, since ~1980, I disconnect the +ve battery lead if the cars not going to be used for a few days or parked up in the bush waiting for when we get back from a walk.
Stops parasitic drains and Heisenbug discharges when thermal expansion during a very hot day causes a hard to track short.
I own 3 Kia’s and they all have various problems, including really big problems, but this is an area they got right. On my daily driver, the Kia Niro, it has a battery button that instantly charges the 12v from the HEV battery. I’ve only needed it once, when I left a light on camping, but it was like magic.
- https://www.kiaenginesettlement.com
- https://www.kiaengineclasssettlement.com
Edit: A friend of mine just got a free engine swap for her... 2012-ish Optima. It threw a CEL on the highway, had the appropriate trouble code, and bam, new engine from the dealership when she told them the code.
First and foremost, the transmission replaces the rather staggering pile of complexity of a modern automatic transmission, typically, with "a few motor/generators, some planetary gears, maybe a band that only engages when a motor is already stopped, and some power electronics." Compared to the 9+ speed automatics, this is dramatically simpler. Quite a few hybrids don't even have a mechanical reverse gear, it's just using the electronics for that brief period.
But, beyond that, you generally aren't asking the engine to idle, or to provide "starting torque" for the car - the hybrid system handles that sort of thing well. On at least the Gen 1 Volts, the motor "idles" at about 1200-1300 RPM, vs the ~750 RPM in most other vehicles, because it's almost never needed at low speed (heating in the dead of winter is the one time I notice it). But you don't have low speed, high load operation on the engines (which is a hard regime to operate in), and you don't have rapid speed changes with gear shifts (which is certainly more stressful than smooth speed changes or continuous speed operation).
You have less brake system wear, and... it goes on.
I know there's this popular "Hybrids/PHEVs are the most complicated of both worlds, so they must be the most unreliable of all worlds!" thing going around, but the data is quite clear that they're exceedingly reliable in actual use, and the "most complicated of all worlds" things tends to zoom out far enough to avoid looking at the transmission or engine design at any level of detail.
There are very few PHEVs that aren't using the same automatic gearbox as the plain-ole ICE model. You are describing the architecture the Prius uses I guess? In almost all cases the manufacturer just wraps a small electric motor around the output shaft of the same automatic gearbox connected to a small battery.
Mazda PHEVs - same auto gearboxes
BMW PHEVs - same auto gearboxes
Volvo PHEVs - same auto gearboxes
Mercedes PHEVs - same auto gearboxes
etc
There are probably some other exceptions i'm missing, but few PHEVs have a custom gearbox. While they may be just as reliable in many cases, they are almost always more complex designs than their ICE variants.
Some Lexus & Toyota hybrids and PHEVs use the eCVT transmission, which uses 2-3 electric motors inside to adjust torque rather than a belt.
The Subaru Crosstrek PHEV (internationally also called the e-boxer platform for the Forester hybrid) uses a Toyota eCVT variant that also still facilitates symmetrical AWD instead of a separate electrical motor driving the rear axle.
The ones I'm familiar with (which, admittedly, don't cover the ones you use) are all "parallel drivetrain" sorts of things, with a Prius-type transmission. Though I'm really only familiar with the Prius and Volt type drivetrains.
This is the same definition wikipedia uses too:
"A plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV) is a hybrid electric vehicle whose battery pack can be recharged by plugging a charging cable into an external electric power source, in addition to internally by its on-board internal combustion engine-powered generator."
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plug-in_hybrid
Except the most popular hybrid, the prius, which admittedly does t have a non/hybrid counterpart because it was done from the ground up to avoid unnecessary legacy technology
Series-Parallel and Series hybrid remove transmission so possibly there's an reliability advantage. For Parallel hybrid, it's electric addon so I don't know there are reliability advantage.
The article suggests plug-in hybrids are nearly 150% more prone to issues than regular cars though? I mean, I have one, and it seems good so far, but it contradicts your assertions.
Toyota CVTs are decently reliable, but other automakers tend to have trouble implementing them well.
The N52 seems rather better, as all its common faults are relatively cheap to fix.
The older N52 engine is also very solid and reliable, my high mileage 2006 330i (E90) has been rock solid reliable in its powertrain.
My mechanic told me the N20 engine is terrible though, he has encountered an absurd number of them failing. The N54 is solid enough mechanically, though they get HPFP issues and need occasional cleaning of soot/gunk from valves.
It's worse in B47, which carries over the same timing parts as N47 and it's generally acknowledged it's best to replace the chain at 120000km there.
6cyls seem to fare better, my guess is the pulling forces on the chain are spaced more evenly.
Having to take my Subaru in for an oil change every six months is annoying, even if it means I’ve only ever had one serious issue. (Computer flipped out because someone didn’t close the gas cap tightly enough, leading to a service visit requirement, which is absurd.)
I have done my oil changes in the past, and for the recommended oil and filter on my 8 year old Toyota, $50 would cover 5 quarts of oil and a cheap filter. Add in disposal + labor, it's sometimes just easier to pay my local mechanic the $75 for the oil change.
https://www.costco.com/mobil-1-advanced-fuel-economy-full-sy...
I just looked up a local mechanic's website, and they advertise $35 for synthetic blend oil change, and $65 for full synthetic blend oil change (most non european cars). I wonder if they price it to be at cost or even a loss leader.
The top car brands - Lexus/Toyota, Acura/Honda, Subaru, and Mazda - have been widely scolded for not trying very hard to build EVs and would rather refine the same exact ICE cars for decades.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_bZ4X
https://ts2.space/en/is-solterra-toyota-or-subaru/#gsc.tab=0
https://www.torquenews.com/1084/why-subaru-takes-credit-new-...
And Subaru might pull away from that partnership after early models had wheels falling off:
https://www.torquenews.com/1084/why-it-s-smart-subaru-pull-a...
It's all kinda incestuous anyway. Toyota owns 20% of Subaru already: https://www.torquenews.com/1084/subaru-officially-joins-toyo...
Is it because "Elon bad" or you have some technical reasons?
But Musk doesn't help matters either. I used to really respect him (and still grudingly do, mostly for SpaceX and Starlink), but he seems more and more unhinged over the years. Maybe if he were more hands off Tesla like he was with Starlink? To me Tesla just feels like an edgy image company rather than an old fashioned car company like Subaru. I don't want that whole baggage or culture, I just want a car.
Kudos to Tesla for jumpstarting EVs, but I'd much rather go with the stale Japanese option.
It bothers me to see a 1 to 100 scale for this - what does the number actually mean in practice? Comparing a score of 80 and a score of 20, does that mean the lower score is likely to need 4x as many trips to the mechanic? 4x as much spent on repairs in a year?
In other words - how big is the gap between first and last place in real-world terms? Presenting the scores this way suggests a huge difference, is that actually the case?
Either way, surprised to see Mini near the top and Mercedes-Benz all the way at the bottom!
Seemingly very little:
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.
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.)
I guess this is interesting, but only actionable info is if you pay for a subscription and look up not just a particular model, but of a particular year and trim
There are many biases build in to self-reporting surveys. Longtime Consumer Reports readers who buy a Toyota because they believe it is the most reliable make want their choice to have been correct. Their answers about problems with their car will reflect that.
There are definitely flaws with self reporting but it’s just a data source with its limitations.
Statistical validity is based on what is done with the data, not whether it’s self reported or measured accurately. What you may be thinking of is whether their study or logic is sound.
And as they explain, they ask people about the actual problems they've had in the last 12 months with their car; nothing soft or fuzzy or relative to expectations at all.