For the first time, four electric cars were included in the failure rate statistics for the year 2022, two of which ended up at the top of the most reliable cars. The most common reason for the departure of the service vehicle has traditionally been a faulty starter battery.
Since 1967, the German automobile club ADAC has been keeping statistics on the breakdown of cars, which is based on the frequency of visits by its mechanics to specific models that are unexpectedly left at the side of the road. According to his ranking, you can get an idea of which cars will not be a problem and which, on the contrary, are better to avoid.
To make the list as objective as possible, those for which the car is not to blame are automatically dropped from the trip statistics. For example, when the tank runs out of fuel or when there is a flat tire.
In the current overview for the year 2022, electric cars appear for the first time ever, and even four of them: BMW i3, Renault Zoe, Volkswagen ID.3 and Tesla Model 3 exceeded the quota required for inclusion in the ranking in the last monitored year of 2020. This amounts to at least 7,000 cars of the given type registered in Germany over the course of two years.
However, no sensation comes from this, it turned out that not one of the monitored electric cars has a significant weakness. The Volkswagen ID.3 and BMW i3 from the monitored year 2020 even had the fewest breakdowns of all cars from the current overview.
However, according to the auto club, it is still too early to draw a final conclusion as to whether electric cars are more reliable than cars with an internal combustion engine. As the text accompanying the results points out, in the future there will be more electric cars in the ranking and the period of their observation will also be longer. It will be possible to arrive at objective results only after several years.
However, there is no question of hasty judgment in the case of internal combustion cars, as the most reliable long-term models are the Audi A4 and three representatives of the Munich brand: BMW 1, 3 and X3.
According to the ADAC car club, the least reliable car is the Fiat Ducato manufactured in 2013. But it is backed by the Ford S-Max from 2016.
Over 43% of all Yellow Angels trips last year were caused by the starter battery. Although it is three percent less than the year before, the auto club does not explain the decrease by the better quality of this part, but by the fact that the coronavirus infection ran rampant in 2021. The drivers did not drive much and the batteries had more opportunities to self-discharge.
A faulty battery is very often behind the problematic reputation of some models, although the rest of the car is fine. A typical example is the Renault Clio, which was not lucky with this consumable part in any of the monitored years and comes out as one of the worst in the small car category.
The Toyota C-HR is also a special case. The Japanese car company, which has long enjoyed an impeccable reputation, was unlucky with its suppliers. A battery with a manufacturing defect appeared under the hood of some models, which led to a remarkably high failure rate of almost brand-new cars. The C-HR was the most affected, but the Toyota RAV4 did not fare much better either.
155 models from twenty car brands aged from three to ten years made their way into this year’s ADAC reliability ranking. You can find a selection of ten problematic and ten reliable cars in the photo gallery, you can see the complete tables with results (in German) here.
