Consumer Reports has released their annual “Best Cars” issue. Their definition of involves a combination of their self-conducted road tests, safety ratings, owner satisfaction surveys, and owner reliability surveys. However, I’m mostly just concerned about their . I like to track the ones moving up and the ones moving down. I do believe it says something broad about the current state of each manufacturer.
Subaru uses a lot of the same parts across all of its vehicles, which means fewer new designs and thus higher reliability. They are also now a more mature company, after a period of very fast growth. Their all-wheel drive has basically stayed the same for years and years, and it’s on every vehicle so they have it down. Toyota/Lexus has a long history of opting for small, incremental changes rather than complete redesigns. This makes them more boring, but boring tends to be reliable.
Still, Consumer Reports recommends that you shop by specific vehicle model and not just by brand make. In general, new models have more problems than those that are 2-3 years old.
Hybrids are surprisingly now nearly as reliable as traditional ICE cars despite their add complexity, while plug-in hybrids have 70% more problems overall than ICE vehicles (down from 146% more last year). Pure electrics have 42% more problems than ICE vehicles (down from 79% more last year). My assumption is that this is again because hybrids have been around longer and the engineers have had a chance to solve the problems that arose. I’m still quite happy with my old Toyota minivan, although I have been watching reviews of the new Volkswagen ID Buzz. Maybe after a few more years…
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