As a consumer, before buying a car, you may often be trapped in the difficulty of really understanding the quality and reliability of a car or a brand of model in the process of long-term use, and in most cases, you can only rely on word-of-mouth information to judge a rough idea, such as relatives and friends, or forum car friends and so on.
As a car evaluation media, we can not make conclusions about the quality and reliability of each model that has been evaluated, because even if we take a test drive, the longest is basically a week of use time, and it is already very diligent to run 1000km a week, but compared to the real users who buy a car for several years or even more than ten years, tens of thousands of kilometers or even hundreds of thousands of kilometers of use, can only be regarded as a dime.
Only for the car we have used for a long time can we give a relatively more reference quality reliability evaluation. For example, my own Alfa Romeo Giulia, as an Italian car, in the impression of many people is that there are many problems, poor quality, expensive maintenance, but in the previous related articles, I have roughly said that this car does not have any major problems in quality and reliability, and the failure lights that have been lit several times are only occasional errors in the system. The most important thing is that the maintenance of this car is really not expensive, at most it is the same level of cost as BMW, and everyone may know that bmw's maintenance cost is already relatively low.
But even if I come to share my own car experience, will it be a kind of word of mouth to some extent in terms of quality and reliability? After all, the sample size is only one, and the reference value is not too high, what if I am just lucky and do not encounter more serious problems? Or did I just turn on the fault light because of my bad luck? It's all possible.
So everyone will want to find more authoritative research data to refer to, J.D. Power (not JD.com, not JD.com, not JDM, but Jundi) is a very famous automobile quality and reliability research institute, they are engaged in this work as early as 33 years ago, and in the Chinese auto market, they also have 12 years of hard work, so it seems that it is a quite authoritative institution.
It's just that whenever we see the list they publish, there are a few question marks floating overhead.
The list has always had many "bright spots"
Recently, J.D. Power released the 2022 U.S. Vehicle Reliability Research Report, which has some highlights, but before interpreting the overseas list, let's take a look at the Chinese Vehicle Reliability Research Report, which is more closely related to us.
In 2021, J.D. Power divided the car brands in the Chinese market into three categories for reliability ranking, namely luxury brands, mainstream brands and independent brands. But you will find that the list of mainstream brands also includes their own brands. I think they are divided into three lists in the hope of showing the differences in the overall performance of different categories of brands, and a separate list for independent brands is probably because the current lineup of independent brands is also getting larger, and it can also more intuitively show the overall level of independent brands.
It should be noted that the list released by J.D. Power China does not include all the car brands in the market, but only brands above the average line of the subdivision category.
Somehow, the brand we are most curious about, Lexus, does not appear on the list, usually not on the list will be two cases, one is that the sample size is small, not up to J.D. Power's survey criteria, the other is to perform below the segment category average.
I guess Lexus' sample capacity in the Chinese market should not be so small, after all, even Infiniti can appear on the list. According to the information that can be read on the official website of J.D. Power China, the last time Lexus appeared on the list was in 2015, when Lexus was behind Porsche and Mercedes-Benz, and was in the third position of luxury brands.
What is more remarkable is that GAC FCA Jeep turned out to be the first place in the 2021 overall list, and the failure rate is lower than that of Porsche, the first place of luxury brands, which is obviously biased from everyone's traditional cognition, in fact, Jeep has also been a frequent visitor to the top few in the past years.
In addition, in the list of luxury brands, Land Rover is second only to Porsche and is better than most car brands, and Land Rover is often above the average level of similar brands in the reliability ranking of luxury brands, which is probably also contrary to everyone's traditional cognition.
In addition, in the past few years J.D. In the Power China Vehicle Reliability Research Report, we can almost always see Dongfeng Peugeot appear in a relatively advanced position, but the brother brand Dongfeng Citroen has almost never appeared, which is also strange, it is reasonable to say that although the two brands may have certain differences in design, the overall reliability should not be much different.
In recent years, there are several new car-making forces in our country that have thrived, according to J.D. In the scope of Power reliability research, they will investigate the problems encountered by Chinese car owners between 13 and 48 months in the past 6 months, in fact, some products of new power brands such as WM, Weilai, Xiaopeng and Ideal have met the survey conditions, but we still have not been able to see the traces of these brands in the list.
There are also two possibilities here, one is J.D. Power did not conduct research on these brands, and the second is that these brands are also below average.
Looking at the vehicle reliability research done by J.D. Power in other countries, this year's US list also has highlights, the top four have three Korean brands, and all of them are a group, Kia first, Hyundai third, Genisys fourth. Toyota and Lexus are five or six.
▲2022 J.D. Power U.S. Vehicle Reliability Study
The U.S. list does not single out luxury brands, but directly in the overall list, with Porsche ranking seventh after Lexus.
Interestingly, although most brands will build multiple factories around the world, especially in China, the vast majority of overseas brands will seek joint venture partners in China to build factories and production, which may lead to a certain difference in the quality of production.
But brands like Lexus and Porsche in the global market sales of models are basically fixed, it is reasonable to say that Chinese consumers to buy Porsche and Lexus and American consumers may even buy from the same production line, but these two brands in China and the United States have come up with different reliability data and rankings, is it possible to supply different power specifications, configurations and car environments to different markets can cause such a difference?
In the 2022 US list, Porsche's data is 162 PP100; in the 2021 China list, Porsche's data is 120 PP100; in the 2021 US list, Porsche's data is 86 PP100. (PP100 is the number of problems per 100 cars, the smaller the number, the better the quality)
No matter how much the comparison between these data, it seems strange.
Remember when we just said that Land Rover vehicle reliability has long been among the top of China's list? It is the penultimate ranking in the 2022 US list, with a figure of 284 PP100. Could it be that the Land Rover produced in our country not only fills in the pit of imported Land Rover reliability, but also frantically raises the score for the overall reliability of the brand?
And Tesla, a new car-making force in the United States, we have only seen its data in the 2021 ANNUAL US list, which is 176 PP100, which is also a very low level. However, in the 2022 US list, there is no trace of Tesla, and their annotation is that this year's Tesla sample is too small.
More subtly, in J.D. Power's reliability studies released in other countries are not just above average brands, so why do they only publish brands above the average line in China? Is the number of brands in China's auto market too numerous and too verbose?
▲2021 J.D. Power Japan Vehicle Reliability Study
Looking at the Japanese list, the composition of the Japanese list is relatively simple, there are only a dozen brands that are relatively mainstream in the Japanese market, and most of them are Japanese. Curiously, the overall value of pp100 in J.D. Power's Vehicle Reliability List in Japan is much lower than in other markets, with an average of 57 PP100 in Japan, 121 in the United States, and 144 in China in 2021.
Brands like Lexus, which are supplied to the world from the same factory, have 34 PP100s in Japan in 2021, which is quite good, but in the United States it is 81 PP100. The 2022 U.S. list is even more outrageous, with 159 PP100.
Or the problem just mentioned, even if the same brand will provide different power specifications, configurations, and users with different use environments for different regional markets, will the quality and reliability really be so different? Even the same brand in the same regional market in adjacent years, there will be so much difference?
So how should we look at it?
For the vehicle reliability research done by J.D. Power, it has always been controversial, and the above are some of the parts that I think are suspicious under the rough reading of the ruts.
So what do we think about J.D. Power's vehicle reliability research? You say that it is completely untrustworthy, but you say that it is very authoritative, but you can't talk about it, it just has a commercial atmosphere, especially the Chinese list does not publish the list of brands below the average line, which is debatable.
However, you can't say that it is completely commercial, after all, some brand manufacturers in the unexpectedly high position of the ranking list will obviously not make themselves lean forward through commercial means. This makes J.D. Power's entire list quite confusing.
Some friends may say that J.D. Power's China list has a strangeness, so go to the overseas list? As I said, most car brands have built factories in China, and we can't guarantee that kia bought in the United States is the same kia as kia bought in China. For overseas lists, we only understand when browsing, if you want to use it as the basis for buying a car and choosing a car, it will not work, unless you buy a few globally unified production brands, such as Porsche, Lexus, and even my Alfa Romeo, etc. (in other words, I have not really seen Alfa Romeo on any list, only Fiat).
Perhaps we should question whether the research done by J.D. Power is rigorous and scientific enough to be executed. Especially for some brands that are not currently selling very well, in the process of sampling surveys, is the sample sufficient to reflect the reliability of all products produced by the entire brand? To put it bluntly, J.D. Power's findings are contingencies, and those four words are important: for reference only.
In addition, in recent years, some of our qualified peers around us have been doing long-term test and dismantling projects, which we believe is also a kind of test that shows the reliability of vehicles with considerable reference value. Although the sample of the same car is still the car they purchased, it may also have a certain degree of contingency, but because the test conditions are more rigorous, uniform, and based, it has a high reference significance. If the car you want to buy happens to be in their test model, you may wish to refer to it as well.
Issue 1832
Author: Chen Houze