What you’re buying is essentially an overpriced Chinese car with Volvo stickers.
And I’m saying this as a Swede. Buy German cars, specifically within the Volkswagen auto group (Audi, VW, Skoda etc) if you want reliable quality.
I'm saying this as a German, i strongly reject those accusations. Do not buy from VW group (and not from PSA/Stellantis (Citroen, Fiat, Opel etc brands), either).
Looking at getting a Golf R once our Prius gives me an excuse (just got rear ended and the thing doesn’t even chirp, squeak or complain, so I might be waiting for a while).
Japanese is maybe even better, but I just cant get over the styling.
Not sure if Hyundai & Kia are quite as reliable, but if not it's on them because they have some of the best warranties in the industry.
The days of their collaboration with Ford are long gone, and with it their body durability problems. They still collaborate with Toyota though.
Also had an issue with the backup camera cutting out. Was caused by a loose connector. Dealership was unwilling to help for free so I just cleaned the contacts and reseated the connector myself. Months later I received a recall notice with no fix available, still more months later hey finally said there was a repair but I haven’t brought it in yet.
All that said I’m still happy with the car despite these imperfections and will keep driving it until the wheels fall off, and wouldn’t have any reservations about buying a new one.
In my country used car dealers will not touch Mazda diesels for trade-ins because they always come back to them with destroyed engines.
However, as it applies to the parent comment, I can't actually say too much about reliability, as both of them were driven primarily on weekends and _maybe_ 2K miles per year.
I also have a Miata (ND - 4th gen) that gets driven less than 3K miles/year. No problems there other than Mazda’s buggy CarPlay (and insane choice to disable the touchscreen when in motion).
Was a Hybrid, though that shouldn't affect this. It wouldn't save most of the settings I changed. Apparently you can either save it "to the key" (I googled how to do it, didn't work) or to your "profile" with a mobile app. I would never want to have to use my mobile to save car settings, even if I owned it, let alone a rental.
It has a feature that scans road signs and displays them on the dash. Awesome feature, which I've had in other cars before. Just in case you missed one and usually more accurate than Google maps for dynamic situations like construction zones. Unfortunately it loudly beeps and blinks at you if you happen to go over the limit or god forbid set the cruise control above the limit. This can be disabled individually but is part of the settings that don't save across car shutdowns.
Why is that an issue? Because setting the cruise control to 50 when in a 50km/h zone will have you driving 45 in reality as evidenced by speed measuring displays I drove by. At 100km/h you'll probably be going 90. I learned the 6 key presses on the steering wheel to disable this after starting the car real fast. Unfortunately it disables the entire feature (else it'd be a lot more key presses and I ain't doing that). If this wasn't a rental but a purchase I'd be in this guys boat and trying to return the car.
This is just one example. The other more dire one is the cruise control. I've mentioned it elsewhere before and this Corolla isn't the only one, but the automatic breaking in these cars nowadays is dangerous. The amount of time I was sitting in the car with my foot right above the accelerator in case I need to power through an automatic breaking situation was unreal.
So glad to have been back home after vacation, driving my Subaru (with an adaptive cruise control that does not have this issue).
This is very common and it's probably a deliberate choice of the manufacturer.
I know that my old car in the 90s reported 10 km/h more than the real speed and most other cars did the same, especially at low speeds. My current car is not as bad but I have to set 52 to go 50, 72 to go 70.
Furthermore some speed displays are calibrated differently. Some of them report me at 50, 47, 53 at different towns on the same route. I know I'm OK at 52 because I never got a fine.
I'm more conservative on roads that I'm not familiar with (eg: on a vacation in another country.) The general rule has always been to go at the same speed of the other cars.
Yeah I hate when that "just happens" too.
> or god forbid set the cruise control above the limit
The word limit is the key here.
> Because setting the cruise control to 50 when in a 50km/h zone will have you driving 45 in reality
Dear god! I hope you somehow made it through that insufferable experience. To think of the few seconds of your life you've irreplaceably lost! Sending a virtual hug!
It's also miserable to drive because of beeping, controls that cannot be seen by the driver, and a dozen other obvious problems.
Supposedly Hyundai fixes such stuff before release, but I wouldn't risk it.
It's never been back to the dealer except for a free oil change at ~1K miles. Mainly because the reputation of Kia dealers is that it's hard to say whether you will be in worse shape if they deny or accept your warrantied repair. I mean, if the engine fails, sure, they can't make it any worse. But there are many stories of people getting a recall and the coolant system not properly bled, so the car overheats on the way home. Or a dealer refusing an obvious warranty repair for ridiculous reasons - only to try to sell you a non-warranty repair for the same problem, etc.
I am driving my car as if there is no warranty, at this point. It's been a GREAT car to drive in most ways, but I don't expect Kia to come through and fix any drivetrain issue in the next few years / 55K miles, if needed.
I will probably go with Toyota for our next car despite loving the handling and comfort of our Subaru.
Great car otherwise. Well, the CVT isn't the best for driving. But the AWD and agility and snow handling is fantastic.
The CVT sort of sucks. Mostly ok but we have a long lag between reverse and drive which causes the car to jerk forward if you try to accelerate before the forward motion starts. The turning radius is amazing though.
My father in law is a Toyota mechanic and warned me to get rid of the car before 100k miles though as more recent subies are as reliable as they used to be.
Personally, not a fan :(
I hope my current car makes it so that I can entirely skip the current gen cars to hopefully the future one with these issues sorted out, including physical buttons.
Kias EVs are even more famour for troubles, just google for Kia ICCU. Even the XC90 competitor EV9 seems to have some trouble with this still.
Outside of those issues, which don't happen on all vehicles, I view the brand as pretty rock solid. I'm impressed by how quickly they iterate, their styling, and their NVH attributes. Their pricing has crept up a bit, but still not terrible.
One local dealer refused to honor under warranty the work another dealer did.
If you have any damage (even minor cosmetic) they will blame that on your issues regardless of relativity.
(I have a Hyundai that's had the ICCU replaced once, the ABS IEB twice, and the low-voltage battery 3 times, two of the 3 times on my dime. All on a less than 3-year-old car with less than 100k miles)
The company has been miserable to deal with compared to my past experiences with other brands.
I definitely expected more Hyundai when I bought the most expensive EV they had to offer at the highest trim level available.
On the plus side a lot of the Genesis vehicles seem like they slap every option the Germans make you pay $1000s each for into the base model, so decent value from that perspective.
I've sat in their EV hatch thing the GV60 in showroom and was impressed by the base features set. I also had a decent length uber ride sitting in the back of their ICE sedan, either the G80 or G90 and it was a nice executive sedan. My backseat reclined, it had motorized shades, the air vents in the back were actually powerful, etc.
(And according to forum threads, at the time this happened to this us, stealerships were putting people on a 1-2 year waitlist for remanufactured engines, or straight-up totalling their vehicles and giving them "market value" for the car, and these models had awful resale value exactly due to these problems.)
That said, a few months ago my daughter was t-boned in it by a driving going 60+ MPH. The impact was directly on the driver’s door. She not only survived, but did so with only superficial facial cuts and some longer-term, back pain.
I can’t be too hard on a car that saved my daughter’s life.
Brand average reliability is tricky though, on their 100-point scale, their top manufacturer (Subaru) has models that range from 38-98.
Looking at the model breakdown... I kinda suspect they don’t really have enough datapoints - VW’s reliability only includes 3 models (the Tiguan, ID.4 and TAOS) - Ford has a 25-point difference between the Escape and Maverick hybrids that share the same engine/powertrain (I can’t think of any reason why the Maverick would actually be notably more reliable than the Escape unless the PHEV escape is dragging down weighted reliability by that much over the mild hybrid), etc.
In-group std is greater than between-group std.
To a USAian, “European Brand” means something from Germany or Scandinavia. If you mean a Ferrari or Lamborghini, you say that name.
As for Ferrari and Lamborghini it doesn't matter what Consumer Reports thinks.
Theres a lot more cities in the US and a lot more "European" cars than German/Swedish.
VWAG owns the largest Spanish car maker, Seat/Cupra. 100% of cars Seat/Cupra sells are VW derivatives. Whatever you imagine the difference between Spanish cars and German cars to be, it is not real.
>French/Italian
Renault is a very different company then Stellantis (Fiat, Citroen, Peugeot).
What you should compare is the parent company making these cars.
>Plus you have some luxury British cars, which are again veery different.
Lotus is a Geely brand, just like Volvo is a Geely brand, some of their cars are on the same platform. Fiat, Citroen, Peugeot are Stellantis brands.
The only spanish car maker is SEAT and it's part of VAG group. SEAT are more expensive than Skoda, but cheaper than Audi.
And using the country card with these automaker corporations is very tricky, because they have factories everywhere. You can buy an Audi made in Spain or a VW made in Slovakia.
Outside that, they are cheap cars, and mine after 10 years have some paint chips even peeling.
> While driving on Highway 13 (Montreal), the vehicle abruptly lost all throttle response
This has happened twice with a Mk II Leaf for us. The second time the dealer charged me over $100 to say "Mēh! No idea what went wrong"
Perhaps BYD? They seem to be getting it together.
As an old and grey computer programmer I do not, absolutely do not want, a "software defined vehicle". My comrades and I are renowned for unreliable crappy consumer products, where car manufacturers in the ICE era developed remarkably reliable and performant vehicles.
I really think electric cars need to be done differently, where the drive train is not dependant on my friends who "move fast and break things". My friends like these should be nowhere near automobiles.
https://www.shopforcars.com.au/news/most-reliable-electric-c...
However, this is not the case for Teslas manufactured in the US, which is why Tesla's global reliability ratings are mediocre at best.
https://www.pcworld.com/article/2850680/copilot-is-coming-to...
I'm looking forward to the time when an EV can give me all of these things, and I'll eagerly purchase one when that happens.
I bought this car after owning a high-end BMW. I was looking for a car that performs well, but is very reliable.
It has been a great car, and it cost only 66% of the price that Vicken paid for his Volvo EX90.
But after reading up a bit, I've found that software platform lock-in was important in enshittification's original formulation — it's not just that quality goes to crap, but that users have nowhere else to go.
Makes you wonder how open software car platform could look like and why nobody is making one.
Some companies have owners that are locked in, who know where the true value of their business lies (usually this involves a high quality product), and holds the management to account to keep the golden-egg-laying goose alive.
But other companies are owned by index funds, ETFs, and/or dumb people who don't know or care how things work. These have no defense against enshittifying.
I've bought some products that are of almost egregiously high quality, and nearly 100% of the time there's family ownership, or it's still run by the founders.
Vehicles with 7 or more years of warranty. If a brand has a hype, but short warranty like Toyota, it is only a hype.
As more and more of the vehicle's experience becomes software controlled, manufacturers who don't have good software development teams are going to lose out. German companies don't seem to understand the growing importance of software, and they are happy to collectively develop the software [1] as opposed to seeing software as a key differentiator.
[1] https://www.electrive.com/2025/06/25/automotive-industry-lau...
No!
A good app is more expensive than a good thermometer readout, and will break much sooner.
I'll pay a premium for no-tech products.
Case in point: any time the rear view camera comes on in a car commercial. Beatufiul car, awesome interior...potato-quality backup camera.
VWAG is now on attempt number two of fixing their Software problems.
They tried Cariad, the result was your experience. The next attempt is giving billions to Rivian.
If you believe that these companies do not understand how important software is you are totally delusional. Literally Billions worth of money have they spent trying to fix that.
I've heard somebody describe it as "they are using methods that have been known not to work for 20 years".
But they know that. That was the idea behind Cariad. Having a new company, unburdened by what other parts of the company are doing, which is doing just software. Giving them the freedom to do things a different way has always been the intention.
What you are describing is not an automotive problem, it is a Europe wide problem. Software Engineers in Europe, in general, are pretty bad, often cling to outdated methodologies and tend to create overly complex and overly useless systems. There are hundreds of examples for this, throughout European industries and governments. "German engineering" has not translated into software at all.
Consider also the salaries of European Software Engineers, even in the most wealthy countries, like France and Germany, it averages around 50k to 60k, it is not the highly lucrative career it is (was?) in the US.
Really? Every large Software project I have seen from the inside was as total architectural mess.
>Software salaries are actually pretty good for Europe now, as far as I know, especially... in automotive.
Not compared to the US. In the US a software engineer in a good position makes exceptional money, especially compared to other engineers. In Germany that is not the case, especially in automotive, where salaries are often union negotiated and Engineers are all on identical pay scales.
>The inital Cariad CEO was just some nondescript car industry guy - they may have tried to have a different culture, but why put a guy in charge who represents the old culture? The current Cariad CEO is a mechanical engineer by education and previously worked in production and logistics. It's baffling. They can't be that stupid (right?), so I think it's mechanical engineering resisting a loss of power and importance.
I just think that there really isn't anybody else. Is there any person somewhere in the German industry who has the ability for leadership and great software expertise? The biggest Software company in Germany is SAP and surely, hiring some SAP manager would have been an even worse decision.
Regarding the Cariad CEO, they could have hired someone from the US software industry or from a smaller company with a reputation for quality - these do exist, DeepL or Ableton for example (though leading such a small place must be quite different from a large place).
Maybe, but US people often do not understand German work culture. The Cariad CEO will have to deal with the IGM and be mindful of German labor laws and specific cultural norms.
But I do not think that you are wrong, but that the general bias to promote "one of their own" caused this.
> "German engineering" has not translated into software at all.
Anecdata: in my 10+ years experience, the worst UX, UI, code and SWEs I've seen, are all German. I'm not saying there's absolutely no good ones here and there, but in general it seems the love for a very complex written/spoken language (riddled with rules and exception) and bureaucracy has translated 100% into software. The interfaces, the code and coding style most of the times give me a 1980s vibe if I'm lucky, or just scare me off altogether in most cases. The code tends to be more complex, abstract, hard to read and comprehend, for no good reason.
The US Software industry has succeeded because it is very open to rapid changes, which the nature of software allows, given the right environment.
>The code tends to be more complex, abstract, hard to read and comprehend, for no good reason.
That is exactly the incompetence I am talking about. This gets extremely bad if governments are developing software solutions, where they outsource to a variety of contractors, who all are somewhat incompetent, but together manage to create a real mess. A mess so bad that every user feels the jank.
Yes, I get it - deleting 7 buttons gets you that $1M bonus - but it totally borks the system for the everyday driver, who then becomes less loyal.
At this point, there are very, VERY few companies I'm loyal to, because almost none are loyal to me - they'll all give "new users" better deals, and take advantage of any loyalty I have to gouge me and charge me more than a competitor.
And because all critical people hate physical buttons VWAG all new models and even concept cars now come with physical buttons on the steering wheel and dedicated climate controls outside of the touchscreen? Very weird things going on, where the things which are developed are the exact opposite of what you say the critical decision makers want.
Have you actually looked at new VWAG models or their new concept cars? Because this complaint seems to exist purely in your head.
It's COSTING them $$ to switch back - and they were losing a LOT of buyers over it. If you read any car magazines, people were constantly talking about this. Car makers are finally starting to listen - after several years of failure.
Couple a "slow-to-respond" GUI with a "everything is done via the GUI" and it's horrible.
I feel it's quite off-base to associate the quality of a car to a country. The quality of a car is a statistical quantity that's mostly related to a specific model of car.
There are at least 3 wrong insinuations in the above post.
1. Volvo engineering is still mostly based in Sweden. Geely has mostly not touched it. So it's still Swedish -- thus it is still Swedish quality and safety. If it has gone down, then it's Swedish quality and safety that has gone down.
2. Many Chinese cars are now high quality.
3. That countries are correlated with quality is a lazy mental shortcut. Many Mitsubishi are not high quality, despite being Japanese.
Also the Volvo EX90 (in the article) is made in Charleston SC.
The list goes on. But yeah, if I look at for instance Volvo EX30 or EX40 etc, they look very ”off” somehow and doesn’t scream ”built to last” any longer.
Compared to the older XC70, 740 and so on which are built like locomotives.
I strongly believe that some countries correlate with quality (in general, and depending on the subject). It has to do with the way of working I guess. People in countries with stronger hierarchy in the workplace tend to polish away the faults and shortcomings when reporting to their superiors.
I don’t believe there’s anything strange in thinking that way. It’s as if saying the Avocados in Peru is generally better and higher quality than the Avocados produced in Spain.
> great, reliable cars
The quality of ride of Chinese cars is not even close to their European counterparts, children get sick even on the front row in ten minutes in a car that costs next to $60K. Their suspension is such that they do not compensate for sudden roll when one side of car hits a bump or hole.
Rolls Royce made their Phantoms to have adjustable clearance so that Chinese buyers would not suffer from bad roads of China, yet all of the buyers of Chinese cars have to suffer from roads that are not ideally paved.
Is this year 2000? Chinese cars are overwhelmingly tuned for much softer ride experience at expense of feeling performance / sporty. Especially 50k+ tier from last few years, most perform better than Euro cars in terms of noise, vibration harshness. You generally have to scrape to bottom barrel entry level 10-15k PRC cars to get bad ride experiences now. Chinese roads also great now, down to rural.
Quality's caught up since 2020s. Sure you can wait 10 years, but there's industry indicators like problems per 100 vehicles (PP100) where PRC EVs are fine / better than foreign bands (built in PRC factories. At least mechanically (power trains, batteries, chassis). Most PRC weakeness comes from stuff like infotainment, drive assist last few years because they've been iterating software a little too fast. There's also proprietary fleet data on EV taxis / rideshare that's been driven to death, and those hold up fine too.
Rolls Royce tuned their PRC cars to be EXTRA PLUSH, because PRC buyers prefers extra cloudy rides vs Euro buyers that prefers firmer / responsive, NA softer than EU, MENA somewhere between EU/NA.
> Is this year 2000? Chinese cars are overwhelmingly tuned for much softer ride experience at expense of feeling performance / sporty.
There is nothing soft in ride of any Chinese car in my experience. These cars are in taxis here and you can experience ride in pretty much every model and brand, from basic to luxury. No Chinese car I've been driven in compensate for sudden rolls.
European cars have much softier ride than anything Chinese, even Chinese "luxury" brands sold here. As you mentioned that, then "sporty, firm and responsive" BMW 5series' are much more pleasant to be schoffered in than anything Chinese.
Chinese luxury car brand Hongqi put V6 turbocharged hybrid motors into their full sedan models [1], this is really a shame!
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hongqi_H9
This shows they do not understand what quality of ride is. What vibrations are, how they affect quality of ride, how electric motors exacerbate vibrations [2], how motor's torque output affect quality of ride, etc, etc.
[2] https://abcnews.go.com/Business/ev-drivers-passengers-motion...
Also, please experience being driven in the car in addition to drive a car.
In case of being driven you are not paying attention to the road and do not know why some acceleration did happen. In this situation your brain can decide that your senses are lying to it because body is poisoned and will invoke gag reflex, which we call ride sickness.
I look into that because I have to drive a family where two members are prone to motion sickness. I will definitely not look into any electric car because of this.
[1] https://abcnews.go.com/Business/ev-drivers-passengers-motion...
In my opinion, it is unavoidable.
Having said that, Toyota is known for their reliability, and Volvo (+ Polestar) was / are known for their safety.
Just to emphasize the point: Nissan is doomed because generally no one wants their cars, but they have perhaps one of the greatest bang-for-buck EVs outside of Chinese brands: the Leaf 2.
Put a CCS fast charge port and better battery cooling in this thing and it'd be the perfect boring reliable EV with physical dash controls (no touch screen BS).
Sure, it'll kill me because of the comparative lack of safety, but that seems like a minor sacrifice in the face of needing to deal with a new car.
It also doesn't have pillars the thickness of an elephant's legs, like all new cars, significantly less compromising to visibility all around. It also lacks the now ubiquitous square and raised bonnet.
I’ve got a 2025 sedan with all the newest safety features, and what you lose in visibility you more than gain in general situational awareness, especially with aging eyes, ears, etc.. Managing display and alarm complexities is the challenge, though, since the aging population also have issues there. A driving training simulator at the dealership for these new sedans for the elderly would be a big help, since many of the safety options are only active in a vehicle under motion. The temptation for the aged is just to shut these confusing options off as too complex, thus losing the safety advantage.
But Mavericks and some of their newer hybrids are eCVTs.
Take this with a grain of salt (since it's not first hand experience), but I have heard from friends that the quality of German cars has degraded significantly
That stat is all the more impressive because it’s also a very common car, (at least as far as expensive cars go), so in my area for example I see at least 10 of them parked on the streets on my daily 30min walk in London.
I own a 2020 BMW with an electronic gearbox, which broke at around 80k km just a couple of months after the warranty expired (yeah I know!). It was a bit of a headache going back and forth with BMW to request a free repair. Fortunately, the headquarters agreed to cover the cost, and they installed a refurbished electronic gearbox. I was quite relieved that I didn’t have to pay about €10K out of pocket!
All that to say that I wouldn’t call BMW particularly reliable in terms of quality these days, but their customer support was decent, at least in my case.
Meanwhile they praise Polestar, new Mini EVs, Smart, Volvo and others that are also being produced in joint ventures with Chinese manufacturers but don’t carry a chinese brand.
German cars, as a rule, are made with complete disregard for the people who will have to work on them. They are reliable while meticulously maintained and before anything even remotely important break. Then they become a nightmare.
And I'm saying _this_ as a Swede, because apparently it matters: what cars are most reliable is publicly available information, and they're all from Asia. My personal favorite is Toyota.
While it's true that it's mainly asian/Japanese cars that are least reported, that doesn't make them the most reliable in general.
Mazdas and Toyotas tend to rust off in our nordic weather way faster than german brands or older Volvos. Sure, the engine might still run but what difference does it make if it's all become a piece of rust that is ready to fall apart within ten years.
You can use car.info to if you want to dig further on this (statistik på skrotade bilar). Or just ask your favorite LLM. You don’t have to take my word for it.
Japan doesn’t salt their roads nearly as much as we do.
But, ok, there are some similarities. Where are the other "loads of videos of your favorite blue colored ones doing the same salute?"
I had a 1987 Volvo 760 in the nineties.
It was an unmitigated piece of shit.
VW ID.4 owner here. The car is pretty good mechanically, but the software is garbage, or more specifically hot dumpster fire.
How questionable?
In my ID.4 pressing both buttons with windows half-open will sometimes close both windows and sometimes one window will go up and the other down. Does that qualify as "questionable"? :-)
> software is good
You mean your parking cameras always turn on when needed and you don't get a black screen where the camera image should be about 30% of the time? Can the car recognize two drivers by keyfob and not mix up their settings? Does it not prompt you to "log in" (confirm the driver) every time you start it? Is anything except the background color tied to the whole login thing (like, for example, seat settings)?
My bar is pretty low here after the ID.4 hot garbage software.
which Swedish or EU companies do?
not a trick question - I'm genuinely baffled by systematic QA neglect in most EU based companies (which are still better than much US companies) .
US driving culture-wise, I’ve seen Audi and Mercedes drivers adopt the same brain-dead behaviors BMW drivers have that I wouldn’t want to be associated with them either.
If I were to buy a new car today, it would be a Toyota or a Honda, maybe a Hyundai.
Avoid like the absolute plague.