With today’s stubbornly high auto prices and interest rates, buying a car, whether it’s new or used, is a high-stakes financial decision.
Consumer Reports is here to help with its just-released exclusive reliability report of cars that owners consider the most dependable and the ones that are regulars at the repair shop.
Every year Consumer Reports surveys hundreds of thousands of its members to ask them simple but important questions about the problems they’ve had with their vehicles in the past year.
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Everything from the engine to transmission issues, leaks, paint, and trim problems. And with electric vehicles (EVs) growing in popularity, CR asks members who own them about battery and charging issues. And then it calculates the predicted reliability of new and used cars, almost every car on the market.
Lexus and Toyota took the top spots for brand reliability this year, followed by Mini, Acura, Honda, and Subaru.
And while people are buying more EVs, CR’s members experienced 79% more problems with them compared to gas-powered cars. EV trouble spots include those with charging, electric motors, and batteries.
CR members are reporting the same issues with most EVs as they do with vehicles that have been designed brand-new from the ground up, whether they’re gas or electric. And EVs are about the newest technology out there. It’s taking a while, even for established carmakers, to work through those growing pains.
But automakers seem to have worked through the growing pains for hybrid vehicles. CR’s members who own hybrids had 26% fewer problems on average than gas-only cars.
And CR found that sedans, along with hatchbacks and wagons, remain the most reliable vehicle types.
Pickup trucks have been at the bottom of CR’s reliability rankings for seven of the past eight years, with EV trucks coming in last this year.
