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Every American Car Brand Is on the Bottom Half of CR's Reliability Rankings

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Re: Every American Car Brand Is on the Bottom Half of CR's Reliability Rankings

#281

Post by buckminster »

robin_reala wrote: post #151
epanchin wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most supermarkets in the UK have in store bakeries. Buying fresh, good quality bread, including sourdough, etc. is easy. I don’t recognise your statement on most bread being made for a toaster. Edit: admittedly not as good as some other European countries.

Life hack: if you want fresh yeast in the UK go to Tesco’s or Sainsbury’s bakery counters, they’ll sell you it by weight.

Until quite recently (five years ago) they didn't charge you for it. It's only a few pence though.

Re: Every American Car Brand Is on the Bottom Half of CR's Reliability Rankings

#282

Post by ilikehurdles »

navigatesol wrote: post #148
Someone1234 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was comparing supermarket breads in Europe and the US. So while I may be shopping in the "wrong" places in the US that doesn't really detract from my overarching point. A lot of people, in both areas, buy their bread at supermarkets. If supermarkets don't offer good products, that may also be a discussion worth having. > I have different values, I don’t understand mainstream American values in this or that regard s…

> I was comparing supermarket breads in Europe and the US Every major supermarket I've ever been to in the US and Canada has a million styles of bread, including many freshly baked right there at the store. > but ultimately we're talking about a lower quality product at a higher price Do you have evidence for lower quality, outside of the roundly debunked "shelf life" argument? Or are these your preferences?

A million styles of bad bread in comparison to any one of the cheap loaves available in a German market. In many major US supermarkets, the freshly baked product is worse than the stale packaged product. Try it at your local albertsons or walmart. It's acceptable if you eat it warm and after that you can use it as a sponge to soak up spills. The $7 artisan whatever quarter of a loaf at Whole Foods is maybe in the same ballpark as what you find in Germany and you still have to be lucky enough to get it fresh. The normal packaged rectangular bread loaves people buy in the US are what we called "toaster bread" in Europe (bread to only be eaten toasted).

What would you consider objectively lower quality anyway? Is use of preservatives and corn syrup lower quality, or is that a preference for shelf life and sweets? Is a McDonalds burger low quality or is that just preference? I can take you to a generic bakery in my old rural small town in Germany where the 25-cent pretzel would blow the socks off any pretzel you can find for any price in any store in the US, but maybe you'd call that preference.

Re: Every American Car Brand Is on the Bottom Half of CR's Reliability Rankings

#283

Post by asperous »

Marsymars wrote: post #280
huffmsa wrote: post #52

> CR says Chrysler’s Pacifica was one that contributed to the drop in rankings thanks to the minivan’s infotainment and transmission issues. Every single "downgrade" I read about is either infotainment or transmission or both. Except Honda, which apparently has shit locks on it's kid hauler. I'm a bit skeptical of consumer reports after actually reading it. My car, a Subaru WRX is given low marks for "stiff ride and…

I dig the WRX, but I would love if the engine were quieter. IMO a quieter engine is always desirable - akin to how I always want my computers to have quieter fans for any given level of performance.

Not to enthusiasts, who are driving for the experience of driving, including the feel, sound, etc

Re: Every American Car Brand Is on the Bottom Half of CR's Reliability Rankings

#284

Post by Marsymars »

arethuza wrote: post #8
inferiorhuman wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're much simpler but they're still complicated and you still require experience to design and build properly. Tesla was too busy breaking the rules to stop and think about why things may have been done a certain way.

Actually, most of the problems we had were fundamental design flaws e.g. a Toyota my wife had where the instruments (speedometer etc.) started cutting out occasionally - problem was tracked back to, of all things, the sunroof! There was a small leak and the electrical connectors for the instruments were in the bottom of the passenger foot-well - where the water was collecting from the sunroof and shorting things out.…

I don't especially want a sunroof, as they inevitably leak, but it's becoming increasingly difficult to get a car at anything other other than the base trim level without sunroof - and when combined with other requirements I have (e.g. sat radio) presence of a sunroof is one of the first things I'll compromise on.

Re: Every American Car Brand Is on the Bottom Half of CR's Reliability Rankings

#285

Post by ska »

lgbr wrote: post #24
rtpg wrote: post #5

This is a bit flame bait-y but I really feel like America is getting a super Galapagos effect compared to the rest of the world. Everything is super different and weird and kinda bad, and nobody seems to notice. I go to peoples houses in the US sometimes. Some of these houses are multimillion dollar homes. The doors are all terrible. The plumbing is crap. The furniture just feels bad. The cheapest studio apartment in…

> Then you get to grocery stores, and you have to go to the “fancy places” to even get the baseline of quality you see in the rest of the developed world. All the chocolate is bad. While I agree with you on other points, I take issue with this. American grocery stores are a real treat when visiting. Produce is colorful, plentiful, and delicious thanks to American embrace of GMO's and subsidies for farmers. Raw ingred…

> Produce is colorful, plentiful, and delicious thanks to American embrace of GMO's and subsidies for farmers.

There are two problems with this statement. One is that the availability of plentiful and colorful produce is very much dependent on where you are in the US, and there are a large number of people who really don't have convenient access to it.

The other is that while produce is generally inexpensive, it is hardly generally delicious. Perfect looking tasteless hothouse tomatoes and peppers etc. are the rule, not the exception in a typical grocery store. Lot's of 'convenience' packaging (e.g. "baby spring mix" boxes), mountains of last years apples, not so much flavor.

If you have the means and live in the right places, you can buy very good produce from farmers markets and specialty stores, but it is expensive; the baseline is often pretty mediocre. And if you don't have the location and time and money to use these alternative sources, that's often what you are stuck with.

The silver lining on all this is that the industrial food system in the US has proven to work well as a very large scale optimization algorithm; unfortunately it's been optimizing on thing like shelf-stability, appearance, shipping convenience and food-science inputs while mostly ignoring flavor and nutritional content (see also why there are so many Holstien cows and so little decent butter). If the consumer demand is there for better food though, it should respond to that also.

Re: Every American Car Brand Is on the Bottom Half of CR's Reliability Rankings

#286

Post by ilikehurdles »

chopin wrote: post #191
Someone1234 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was comparing supermarket breads in Europe and the US. So while I may be shopping in the "wrong" places in the US that doesn't really detract from my overarching point. A lot of people, in both areas, buy their bread at supermarkets. If supermarkets don't offer good products, that may also be a discussion worth having. > I have different values, I don’t understand mainstream American values in this or that regard s…

My experience (Germany) is different: You can't get a good bread in super markets here. Heck you can't even get a good bread at specialized bakeries (with some very rare exceptions). I bake my own bread as a result.

Are you comparing this to the US or some other country, or just broadly speaking? I have had better breads than Germany in other countries, and I've had bad supermarket breads in Germany, so I can agree there, but when comparing to the US it's like comparing apples to sawdust.

Re: Every American Car Brand Is on the Bottom Half of CR's Reliability Rankings

#287

Post by delecti »

ptaipale wrote: post #154
arethuza wrote: post #3

I must admit that's not what I expected - I've seen it repeatedly asserted that electric cars are so much simpler than ICE cars that their reliability should be much higher (which does seem reasonable to me). Mind you - its over twenty years since I've had an engine/transmission problem with a car (plenty of other faults - but not with those components) - maybe I've been lucky though.

Electric cars are not that much simpler than ICE cars. The drivetrain is simpler, but most parts of the car are similar and share the same potential weaknesses. The body may rust, the doors have hinges and seals that may leak water, the windscreen may crack or its seams may leak, the brake discs will wear out (even if more slowly due to energy regeneration feature), the brake fluid pipes may corrode and leak, the sus…

The problems I've had to repair on the cars I've owned have mostly been things that don't exist on an electric car. If you weight repairs by cost, then it skews even further. And probably most of the ones that would still apply to an electric are maintenance tasks (replacing bulbs, brakes, tires). All of the non-drive bits of the car are still there, but in my experience those just don't fail as often, and they can generally be tolerated a bit before fixing it. Drive bits breaking in an ICE car tend to make the car undrivable.

Re: Every American Car Brand Is on the Bottom Half of CR's Reliability Rankings

#288

Post by vkou »

huffmsa wrote: post #178
tibbydudeza wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep you buy a WRX for the drivetrain and rally heritage ... the terrible plastic interior was a moot point.

The seats are comfy enough, the steering wheel is beefy, the only point of failure I've had is the battery. Otherwise, it's exactly what it's supposed to be. CR give my other car, a Jaguar F-Pace low marks for "loud engine and cabin, stiff choppy ride and bad infotainment." Which to me sounds like a lot of soccer mom's thought they were getting "luxury" utility vehicle but accidentally purchase a 350hp supercharged v…

> Cars are for driving, not "infotainment".

If you're one of the ~30 million Americans, crawling along in your single-occupant vehicle through rush-hour gridlock, you will care a lot more about the 'infotainment' part of your car than the 'driving' part.

Re: Every American Car Brand Is on the Bottom Half of CR's Reliability Rankings

#289

Post by pflats »

kstenerud wrote: post #2

It's interesting to note the difference in communication styles when company PR teams respond to requests for comments. Fiat Chrysler and Chevy both responded in predictable marketroid speak, complete with extensive use of passive voice and grand, hand-wavey platitudes "We care committed to blah blah blah" "Quality is of the greatest importance blah blah blah" "blah blah above industry average blah blah blah" "blah b…

I felt the opposite. Tesla's answer came across the worst to me, and reads to me with the over-specificity of a student making excuses for why their paper isn't done on time.

> "It was a supplier-related issue".

Passing the buck is really not a great look to start with. It makes the rest of the response seem like a series of excuses.

Tesla chose the supplier. Tesla built and inspected and sold and shipped the car with those parts. This is a Tesla-related issue. The only time Tesla should mention a supplier issue is in response to, "why can't you sell me a car?"

> "[It] did not pose any threat to vehicle safety".

That's good, but this isn't the safety survey.

> "[T]here was a[...] false service alert [... that was fixed] within two weeks of being reported".

I'm not even sure how to react to this one. Bringing my car in to be told "false alarm" is really not reassuring. And two weeks to fix a false alert doesn't help me - I've probably already brought it in for service.

> "This proactive approach to improved reliability is one of the reasons why Tesla is the highest rated car brand among consumers, according to Consumer Reports." (Paraphrased:) Our cars are the safest and best performing, and Model S is #1 in satisfaction.

To me, blaming a supplier for the issues is a terrible way to start, and this is likewise a terrible closing.

"You just fell in the rankings to come in 3rd to last in our reliability survey. Any comments?" "Our cars are the safest and fastest and we have always ranked #1 on your customer satisfaction survey."

Those stats are undeniably good. They also make me think those are the stats the company cares about a lot more than reliability.

Re: Every American Car Brand Is on the Bottom Half of CR's Reliability Rankings

#290

Post by Marsymars »

asperous wrote: post #283
Marsymars wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dig the WRX, but I would love if the engine were quieter. IMO a quieter engine is always desirable - akin to how I always want my computers to have quieter fans for any given level of performance.

Not to enthusiasts, who are driving for the experience of driving, including the feel, sound, etc

I consider myself an enthusiast, and still consider engine noise to be undesirable.

Among various other car things, I'm very enthusiastic for in-car noise cancelling: https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/9/18175748/bose-noise-cancel...

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