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Who makes the most reliable new cars?

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Re: Who makes the most reliable new cars?

#951

Post by michalf6 »

wizee wrote: post #678
michalf6 wrote: post #54

BMW got much better since the switch to B series engines, N series era was horrible. Timing chains between the engine and gearbox are a pain point though, they need to be replaced with mileage.

The B58 and B48 are quite impeccably good engines, both in terms of reliability and also performance/response. I had an excellent experience with my B58-powered M240i. I've also never heard anyone needing to do anything in practice with timing chains on these engines, even at high mileage. It seems the whole car would be worn out before the timing chain wears out, provided you use decent quality oil and don't neglect…

I'm shopping around for a B48 powered car, and there have been instances of stretched chains at like 180000km.

It's worse in B47, which carries over the same timing parts as N47 and it's generally acknowledged it's best to replace the chain at 120000km there.

6cyls seem to fare better, my guess is the pulling forces on the chain are spaced more evenly.

Re: Who makes the most reliable new cars?

#952

Post by michalf6 »

tom_ wrote: post #288
avar wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The N53 is even better, BMW phased out the N52 in favor of it, except in developing economies with subpar fuel standards.

The N53 is notably one of bmw's less reliable engines. Everything that goes wrong with it is tedious to debug and ends up hugely expensive to fix because you always end up needing to replace several pricey injectors. Then it breaks again later. The N52 seems rather better, as all its common faults are relatively cheap to fix.

Yup, they switched to piezoelectric injectors in N53 which are crazy expensive and regularly fail.

Re: Who makes the most reliable new cars?

#953

Post by usefulcat »

fsckboy wrote: post #517
usefulcat wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I doubt a 6 years old lexus rx350 is less safe than 2023 Toyota Yaris for example. Ok, but those two vehicles are significantly different sizes regardless of year, are they not? And that’s usually very relevant where safety is concerned.

that may be true of these two cars, but I don't think he was cherry-picking those just to make his general argument. are you making the general argument that this larger vs smaller car issue will always be the difference? what happens to the difference in safety improvements over time, always overshadowed by size in the used market?

My point was that, depending on the type of collision, a 6 year old rx350 could easily be a lot safer than a Yaris due its much larger size.

Maybe there would be less of a difference in a single vehicle collision, but AIUI in a multi vehicle collision size (and relative height) usually matters a lot. So it didn't seem to make their point very well.

Re: Who makes the most reliable new cars?

#954

Post by tomwheeler »

vondur wrote: post #453
yaomtc wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> car safety has drastically improved Safety between cars, and within cars, has improved. However, due to the increasing size of the average vehicle on the road, among other factors, car safety for pedestrians/cyclists has decreased. https://www.npr.org/2023/06/26/1184034017/us-pedestrian-deat...

People drive horrible now. Running lights, crazy lane changes, excessive speeding etc. Here in the US is started during the pandemic and hasn’t improved.

I think you forgot "looking at their phone instead of the road."

Re: Who makes the most reliable new cars?

#955

Post by sentientslug »

thsksbd wrote: post #456
calamari4065 wrote: post #416

I've had a regrettably excellent experience with my 2015 Mazda. Easily the most reliable machine I've owned. Which is unfortunate because it's a soulless, joyless shitbox and I hate it. It just starts every single time, but it's not fun to drive. I see dozens of the exact same model on the road every day and they're all boring. The interior is fine, the handling is pretty good, the power is fine, fuel economy is fine…

I wish my cars were merely boring. One car (KIA) has electrical problems, probably the CAN bus. Parking shifter has to be overridden with a screwdriver to shift, the ABS sensor is on, and the cruise control doesn't disengage when I press the brake. This car has a glove box of recalls letters Im going to have done when I finally have an appointment w/ the dealer. The other one a VW, otherwise the "reliable one", had a…

Genuinely never understood why anyone would buy a Kia or Hyundai product. Year after year after year there are constant problems and recalls. What drove you to buy one? (no pun intended)

Re: Who makes the most reliable new cars?

#956

Post by GuB-42 »

thebruce87m wrote: post #949
GuB-42 wrote: post #823

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Toyota engineers cramped tens of thousands of lines in a single file and the lines freely update hundreds of global variables. While the "single file" part is not great, using all global variables in an embedded system can be a good thing. I've worked on a critical piece of software for aircraft that did this deliberately, for safety reasons. One of the most important criteria for that software is determinism, whic…

As an embedded engineer I’ve never heard of this and it seems… unwise. Yes, we avoid dynamic memory allocation but using globals for everything? Assuming C: For inter-file access static variables with getters/setters achieves the same thing and makes it easier to split/test I’ve never went as far as not using local variables in functions but you could use static here too to avoid the possibility of two functions shar…

We still had local variables, for internal calculations and the likes of course, but most of the interface was done through globals. (btw, it was indeed C)

Perhaps what is missing is that the way we did testing was a bit unconventional. That is, we didn't have unit tests. Instead, we did it all through integration testing on the real hardware. And setting these globals was how we got coverage. We also had a particularly good traceability, so we knew exactly which tests to run after each code change and get our coverage back, which made up for the fact that we couldn't tests the functions independently.

It was a rather successful project, we got audited a couple of times with only minor issues. It certainly made testing more difficult, but we in exchange, it was much closer to real life conditions.

Note that it was a while ago, newer project use a more modern approach with a continuous integration platform, unit tests with an emulator, etc... We also use less C, instead using industry specific tools and certified code generators, multitasking RTOSes, etc... With C and ADA for the inner and legacy parts.

Re: Who makes the most reliable new cars?

#957

Post by Shocka1 »

hintymad wrote: post #181

Toyota is amazing for making reliable cars but writing truly shitty code. IIRC, a lawsuit a few years ago about Toyota's faulty brake system revealed that Toyota engineers cramped tens of thousands of lines in a single file and the lines freely update hundreds of global variables. It's also interesting that Japanese companies follow ISO this and CMM that yet they develop slowly and produce shitty software services ev…

As someone who wrote code for one of the bigger auto manufacturers that wasn't Toyota, but one of the most respected auto manufacturer's for quality... Everyone here would be buying 15+ year old cars if they got a peek at that codebase.

Re: Who makes the most reliable new cars?

#958

Post by netsharc »

mint2 wrote: post #616
pockybum522 wrote: post #584

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Started during the pandemic? My friend, I think you just might not remember how terribly people drove pre-pandemic as well.

No, it’s true. People started driving like they were fleeing zombies during the pandemic, and the behaviors stuck. With the roads deserted people went faster and more carelessly. When things recovered and roads got crowded they didn’t tone their driving back down. I do insurance things. It’s well known in the field.

The lockdowns brought about a pandemic of selfishness. If x% of the people didn't like lockdown rules and they broke them and they were fine, y% of those probably absorbed the lesson that some other rules are useless.

It didn't help that most, maybe all, governmental authorities were improvising their COVID response, some other percentage of people lost their fear/trust in authorities that way.

Ha, societal breakdown indeed...

Re: Who makes the most reliable new cars?

#959

Post by neuralRiot »

koliber wrote: post #695
vondur wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People drive horrible now. Running lights, crazy lane changes, excessive speeding etc. Here in the US is started during the pandemic and hasn’t improved.

I noticed that too, but I am questioning myself. I’m wondering how much other people’s driving has gotten worse, vs me getting older, more defensive and risk averse, and noticing such driving. If I look back to my 20s, I was not an exemplary driver.

Same boat here although I can say that in my younger days I was always a “civilized” driver on city streets but was also into street racing and bike speeding which was done in isolated areas or late at night. Nowadays I see more “1 block drags” to show the pop-bang of a shitty modded 3-series than anything else. That and the “Coupé-SUV” owners who think they’re driving an MRAP on an assault.

Re: Who makes the most reliable new cars?

#960

Post by taurath »

SandunGunn wrote: post #853
taurath wrote: post #758

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chrysler has had some of the least reliable for most of my entire lifetime and Mercedes shares a parent company and presumably a lot of parts with them.

Mercedes is owned by Daimler Chrysler (30 out of 30) by Stellantis ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellantis ) along with: Fiat, Alfa Romeo (unranked), Dodge (21) RAM (15) Jeep (26)

Whoa I totally messed that up! I didn’t even know that they dropped Chrysler in 2007 (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercedes-Benz_Group)
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