Tesla has received a brutal reality check from Germany this week. The country’s closely watched TÜV Report 2026 has not only ranked the Tesla Model Y as the absolute worst car for reliability in its age group but noted that it has the highest defect rate of any vehicle tested in the last ten years.
The Model 3 didn’t fare much better, landing in the third-to-last spot with a 13.1% failure rate.
Europe based; don’t go BMW! I had the iX and it gave me a few scared (had to replace the front motor and the charging port). I’m driving an Xpeng G6 and while it’s not the best car, it is reliable (facelift)
2019 Nissan Leaf owner.
I had the ABS system die on me. On the highway, got a warning that there was no power with 84% battery remaining, told me to pull over as soon as possible. Car was full stopped on the side of the road. Replacement was about $3k.
I do not think that is a typical experience. Other than this incident the car has been fantastic.
I was run off the road, slid down and embankment, and had to drive another 1/2 mile (0,8km) off road to get to where I could drive back up the shoulder to the highway. Car had long grass stuck in everywhere but no damage other than cosmetic that we could tell. Granted this incident may have caused the eventual failure of the ABS unit.
Them’s my anecdotes.
Second the 2019 Nissan leaf. I got a battery replacement with 6 months of warranty left and they did it within a week. Car is just so fun to drive too.
The dealership that replaced my ABS tried to fail my battery to get me a replacement. Said to bring it to them for any more electrical issuss and they’ll keep trying.
That reminds me, there’s a recall on the fast charger I need to make an appointment for.
I’m also happy with my 2019 Leaf Plus. I only wish I had not paid extra for the plus and instead just rented a car for any longer trips.
The additional cost isn’t worth it, I so rarely drive more that 50 miles a day.
I like the knobs and buttons, my Leaf isn’t connected to the Internet, but it has Android Auto. I think it’s too big, but most other people in my home country (US) think it’s a tiny car.
I’ve driven about 35,000 miles since mid-2020.
I think it’s too big, but most other people in my home country (US) think it’s a tiny car.
Ha. My first car of my own was a 4 cylinder chevy metro. I loved that car but it completely spoiled me for car size and fueld economy. Getting 55mi/gallon highway 45 in the streets just makes everything else look like trash. What’s sad is this was late 90s and fuel economy hasn’t budged because they just made heavier cars to skirt around regulations; hence the many giant trucks and every family having an SUV in the US.
Having learned and driven a manual for so long the transition to automatics becaise of manual availability decline was an adjustment. Not having gears at all in my electric tripped me out for a while. Now I love leaving gas chugging coal rolling mofos in the dust when they try flexing their compensation mobile.
My first car was also a 4 cylinder. Basically 6 horsepower (actually just looked it up and it had 103 hp.)
I still drive my Leaf like a grandma on her weekly grocery run. I just don’t think we should have powerful cars. Ideally, we’d just have better public transit and more walking. But at least in the short term, smaller cars that won’t kill pedestrians.
I wish there was anything smart about smart cars. I would love to have a tiny car with excellent gas mileage or at least a more affordable price point. But at the price and mileage there is no difference between it and most (non-luxury) cars and even some SUVs.
I also checked and need to amend myself: my Metro was a 3 cylinder. I forgot about the first time I popped the hood and realized I was driving a lawnmower with a body.
In EU, BYD is kinda good. My Atto3 has physical buttons for everything on top of the tablet for infotainment. So I don’t need to touch a screen to turn off the radio, or to activate the basic functions of the car.
They also offer a good deal of warranty (250k KMs on the battery pack) and they have high rates in EuroNCAP.
They are affordable, compared to other EVs and I love their aesthetics.I’m satisfied with it and recommend to anyone here.
Unfortunately, no one knows if BYDs will be reliable until 8 years from now.
Well, my warranty covers 8 years of the car so I guess I’m covered for those 8 years
I can’t wait for BYD to come to Canada.
You won’t get one, they are only allowing 50,000 Chinese EVs total from all manufacturers.
are there any that can’t be bricked remotely by the manufacurer?
I was reading an article about the Slate truck. Apparently the base model won’t have a mobile antenna in it and the reviewer considered it a negative ಠ_ಠ
I got under the dashboard and removed the SIM from my Leaf. Took a screwdriver and 15 minutes, but Youtube showed me the entire process.
It’s like removing the inhibitor chip from Rex.
To what end? Just to prevent the remote bricking? Does that mean you no longer have to decline their data collection requests every month or so?
Asking as someone who loves their Leaf but could love it more.
No, I wasn’t even thinking about remote bricking when I did it.
All of the car makers are making big money by selling your telematics data, so insurance companies can charge you more:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/11/technology/carmakers-driver-tracking-insurance.html
and then there is this:
https://www.newsweek.com/ice-buying-americans-location-data-under-scrutiny-11627381
Unfortunately, the Leaf doesn’t really know the SIM is removed, so it still asks me every month. But fortunately, now it doesn’t matter what I answer 🙂
Thanks for the info. Looks like I have a lroject after spring plantings, trimmings, and repairs are done.
This is why evs and newer cars will never work for me.
IMO: bring back AMC and make an actual analog electric car with none of the bullshit.
I don’t understand why i can’t go out right now and buy a brand new 1992 civic hatch (one of the best consumer cars made).
Fuck government laws.
I guess I’ll be turning to independent retrofit shops after my cars get too old to be reliable. I would bet more and more of those will pop up, like they did for semi truck engine retrofits.
Buy new semi, rip out that drive train, buy a crate drive train with no bullshit, slap it in. Then you have a brand new semi with all the shit removed.
Especially after the 2027 laws.
I feel ya. Our vehicle feels like it was a bit before this became so common. It was kinda funny because it was like they were desperately trying to sink sales on the model as they took out basic things like the compass. It was unsuccessful and they finally discontinued the model despite decent sales. Their replacement gets worse sales than the down years of the old model. More expensive and lots of electronic bs.
We got a Peugeot e208. As a car it’s absolutely solid, but the “smart” features can be really unintuituve. Plus I have no idea what data it’s collecting. Too scared to look tbh. But ye, as a car, it’s got good range, is relatively budget friendly, and isn’t the size of a fucking bus. (Seriously, why does it seem like there are no small cars on the market anymore?)
ETA: Oh and in terms of reliability, we’ve had it a year and a half with no issues. We drive it a lot as well, so it’s not like it’s just sitting in a driveway
Hyundai’s quality control is non-existent in general so not them. Anecdotal, but Ford and Tesla also seem like total messes from what I’ve seen. So uh, none of them at least
Yea even while ignoring musk Teslas are absolutely dogshit, plus they feel like tech illiterates idea of a high tech vehicle. European ford EVs are VWs which isn’t exactly a stamp of approval.
What’s wrong with VWs?
They used to be great but the last 30 years the quality has gone way down, to the point where they’re the worst build EUDM vehicles you can buy, save for GM vehicles. Even Audi, their premium brand, has become shit. Stellantis may have worse software but they’re arguably better build. To be fair the quality, industry wide with no exceptions, has gone down but VW have done some questionable things, like dieselgate and the launch of the ID3/4, that ended up insanely expensive and has forced them to pinch every penny.
I assume you’re talking about the ICCU?
Not even, just Hyundai’s track record in general, though the fact you had something to immediately point to just proved my point lmao
Hyundai issues have all been with gasoline engines, especially turbos, but all modern small engines with turbos suck.
I guess that’s true, Hyundai has also been good at trying to make those problems right. Extended warranties, replacement, etc. they got there problems but they didn’t tend to leave you high and dry.
As opposed to Detroit vehicle ownership, which usually involves joining a class action
I know enough people with Hyundai’s that have been left high and dry and had to genuinely fight all the way up to corporate to try to get a resolution approved, and sometimes even still not then. Again, maybe anectodal, but my experience is more that they do everything they can to leave you high and dry unless they figure it’s going to cost them more in lawsuits not to
Sounds like the normal corporate strategy.
From the US, for context. I have a Chevy Bolt EUV. The main draws for me were the affordability and the fact that the climate control is all physical buttons. The cabin feels like a regular vehicle and not like some technocrat’s imagined all screen cockpit of the future. I commute every day with it no problem.
The ride is smooth, seats are comfortable (on the 2023 model, at least), and the sound system is decent. The one downside is the DC fast charging caps out at 50kW. It makes planning road trips a little more involved due to the wait time to charge from 20-80%.
My commute is roughly 50 miles round trip, which leaves me with a little over 3/4 battery capacity when I get home. I just plug the car into a regular wall outlet and charge overnight.
I don’t think we have the data yet to answer the question, and then there’s the trap that past performance does not indicate future results.
All the manufacturers are designing and building new platforms with wholly new drivetrains. Some are recycling a lot of previous experience, and others are not (eg VW has a lot of experience with chassis and interior whereas BYD is new). But all cars are increasingly software dependent and manufacturers are assuming that they can fix bugs in production, so the prior experience is mostly limited to physical arena.
We can make assumptions and generalizations based on what the corporate culture has produced over the previous decades - Germans tend to be higher maintenance and require more precision in their repairs than other cars but they have good dynamics; Japanese cars are boring but require minimal maintenance; American cars are increasingly complex and leaning towards German levels of precision but with highly variable levels of reliability.
Overall though, electric vehicles have vastly fewer moving parts; the WeberAuto teardown of the Bolt EV drivetrain demonstrates it - I think there’s fewer than 10 moving parts including transmission, whereas there’s more than 10 parts in a single cylinder’s exhaust valve train in an ICE. So it comes down to the resilience of the electronics - is the heat managed properly, are the components sized adequately to handle the load over long term, are they waterproofed for the long term, vibration managed, etc. It’s hard to assess that.
I like to make assumptions on reliability by looking at used car market, when you see dozens of a specific model and then do a quick search, sometimes you find recurrent issues (drivetrain?) and how the constructor is dealing with it.
And it is reassuring to see most of 10 years models with a battery SOD > 85%
Battery life is a function of how the owners did charging.
American cars are increasingly complex and leaning towards German levels of precision
Wut. German cars are the neither precise nor reliable. That’s the only way US cars are getting closer.
Ioniq 5s are great, but they use a newer 800v e-gmp vehicle platform (along with other kia and Genesis EVs) which all have an iccu issue that’s been hard to pin down for Hyundai. Their other 400v based EVs like the Niro and Kona I heard are just fine.
The ICCU issue wouldn’t be a big deal of they had stock of them. I had the car at the shop for ~60 days waiting for the backordered part to arrive.
Otherwise the car has worked without issues.
Reliability might be a dream right now, Evs are still in rapid development.
I’m hoping Rivian turns out well, I’d like to consider the R2 as my next vehicle when the lease is up.
Rivians are a nightmare for minor crash repair.
My mom got a used polestar 2 maybe a little over a year ago and she loves it. We have been a completely Toyota family until then.
Last week I got a note from my local dealer that the Toyota bZ4X EV was available. I currently have a Toyota I like and this one looks interesting.
I just looked up used prices and at about 25k, they seem very reasonable. I may get one of these for myself!
They are pretty bad compared to other EVs in the price range. And they are a Subaru design. Not that that’s bad, just it’s not a Toyota. And it’s either company first EV. I wouldnt.
Thank you for the heads up!
I don’t like that all the new cars have touchscreens these days. Are there any with proper old-fashioned buttons?
The Slate truck comes close, that’s about it. I would love an EV, but I just refuse to accept a 55 inch flat screen tv in front of me while driving.
It’s expensive to convert, but if I had the money I would be picking up something like a 2007 Rav4 with a thrown rod and making it electric.
Just buy old cars and keep the retrofit shops in business. The billionaires refuse to make cars we want. Youll be forced to have everything you dont want.
Very expensive, putting new money into and old car on a custom build that is unknown for reliability.
New cars are over 40k in many places. An entire Subaru crate engine can be had for under 10k.
The Slate Truck has no infotainment system at all, it’s just a bare dashboard with buttons.
The Slate truck doesn’t exist yet, at least not as a street legal mass produced vehicle. They’re aiming for a late 2026 launch, but they’re not there yet.
It’ll have a backup screen, its the law.
Ah, true. That I wouldn’t mind though, those are handy.
Kia and Hyundai. When I was doing my research, those two were the only brands that had physical buttons for everything related to driving. I only need the touchscreen for changing albums or settings.
Teala gets a lot of flack for this (and rightfully so earlier on) but nowadays the only thing you cant do from the wheel is climate control, and turning your fog lights on.
Climate control is automatic though and its pretty much set and forget, so that leaves fog lights, if your car comes with them.
And none of these important controls (temp, defog, defrost, fog lights) are behind touch screen menus if configured properly.
Teslas led all manufacturers for frontal collisions. The screen is distracting and dangerous.
If you want to argue that screens are distracting because you can do so much on them that’s one thing, but climate control being on the screen isn’t the cause of some epidemic that is leading Tesla to be at the forefront if that’s the case, it’s just not that distracting, and you can do everything else but fog lights without it, and a lot of Tesla’s don’t even come with fog lights.
What is distracting while driving is dealing with the navigation system if you want to change something, but that’s the same in any car, whether you use your phone or the screen, with voice or without. Maybe people shouldn’t be fussing with that while driving and pull over or turn it off and rely on road signs if something changes if you don’t have a passenger to put the new info in.
This is what’s frustrating in that car designers don’t understand most people don’t necessarily hate big screens, it’s putting essential controls in those screens. I’m a fan of big touchscreens myself but I want them to be strictly for infotainment purposes only. Any essential component should still be knobs, dials, and switches.
Which market? US/EU?
Budget?
I don’t think he’s looking for advice, just looks like he made himself a bot?
The pronoun is she and no I really just got curious about things. Everyone is accused of being bot these days, act funny bot! Have neurodivergence bot! Say something people disagree with bot!
I’m not a bot, my avatar is!
Good bot! /s
deleted by creator
I’m not using a bot, I just thought of these questions. I use piefed a lot, previously I was posting articles a lot then got fixated on asking questions. People with ADHD exist and they’re not bots.
Why delete your response?
She’s not a bot, just very active on here (and a mod of many communities).
Thanks for the clarification.
If i may, Eu, no price in mind but i’d say not pricy for the show (like not the priciest or luxury oriented), and if possible to add a particularity, can carry animals (like a big dog ?) ?
Taycan has been reliable for me for 3.5 years. Never had a breakdown or left me stranded or anything like that. A few recalls and warranty things here and there but nothing crazy for any modern new car.
Back in my day, the Tesla Model S was the best of the best. It doesn’t seem so long ago…
