Ranking The Most Satisfying Vs Most Reliable Car Brands In 2024

This graphic, via Visual Capitalist's Marcus Lu, visualizes data from recent Consumer Reports surveys on car brand satisfaction and reliability.

Rivian, BMW, and Tesla were the three most satisfying brands in 2024, but far from the most reliable. In terms of reliability, Japanese brands like Subaru, Lexus, and Toyota came out on top.

Data and Key Takeaway

The underlying data behind these rankings is listed in the tables below.

Satisfaction is represented as the share of owners who would buy another car from the same brand, while reliability is based on Consumer Reports’ proprietary survey data.

Note: several brands were left out due to insufficient data. These are: Alfa Romeo, Chrysler, Dodge, Fiat, Infiniti, Jaguar, Land Rover, Lincoln, Lucid, Maserati, Mercedes-Benz, Mini, Mitsubishi, Polestar, Porsche, Ram.

A key takeaway from this data is that owner satisfaction isn’t necessarily tied to reliability. For example, both EV brands in this survey (Tesla and Rivian) scored very highly in satisfaction, but poorly in reliability.

On the other hand, brands like Acura and Mazda rank highly in reliability, but lower in satisfaction.

There are limitations to this data, of course. Satisfaction is highly subjective and prone to bias (e.g. Rivian is a new brand that caters to a specific demographic), while reliability is a complex metric that can be difficult to properly gauge.

Rivian satisfies, Volkswagen disappoints

Consumer Reports also highlights which brands satisfy owners within specific areas. Rivian ranked the highest in terms of comfort, usability, and ownership costs (which are typically lower for EVs).

Meanwhile, Volkswagen ranked the lowest in terms of driving experience and usability. Audi, another VW group brand, ranked lowest in terms of cabin storage.

It’s interesting to note that Rivian and Volkswagen have recently joined forces to share EV platform technology.

If you enjoyed this graphic, check out Global Car Production by Country on Voronoi, the new app from Visual Capitalist.