The Porsche 911 was ranked the most dependable vehicle in J.D. Power's annual Vehicle Dependability Study for the U.S. market in 2022, the second-straight year the German sports car has topped the study.
Porsche itself didn't fare as well as it normally does when it came to the overall brand rankings, having slipped five places to seventh in the study. Instead, it was the Korean brands that dominated, with Kia, Hyundai and Genesis taking out the first, third and fourth spots, respectively. In second was Buick, while Toyota rounded out the top five.
The annual study examines problems experienced during the past 12 months by original owners of vehicles bought new three years ago, which for the 2022 study means models that were new for the 2019 model year. Close to 30,000 owners were surveyed in the study.
Brands as well as individual models in popular segments are ranked by the number of problems experienced per 100 vehicles (PP100), with a lower score reflecting higher quality. This year's study covered 184 specific problems across nine main categories, ranging from powertrain to infotainment to driving experience and, new for 2022, driver-assist.
2022 Kia Sorento
The study now also measures an owner's satisfaction, including whether the owner still finds the vehicle as appealing after the few years or ownership, as well as what software updates have been made to keep the vehicle fresh.
As mentioned above, Kia topped the brand rankings, with its PP100 score coming in at 145. Buick and Hyundai were close behind with scores of 147 and 148, respectively. At the other end of the spectrum, you have Land Rover in last place with a score of 284. Volvo and Ram completed the bottom three. The industry average score this year was a PP100 of 192.
Before you write off those brands at the bottom, note that many of the problems found are rather superfluous. For example, some of the most common problems were related to voice recognition, Bluetooth connectivity, and other infotainment-related features. In fact, the category with the most problems reported by owners was infotainment.
Note, Tesla isn't included in the study. The brand doesn't grant J.D. Power permission to survey the owners of its vehicles in 15 states, which made the sample size too small to be valid. A small sample size is also why you don't get any of the exotic brands in the study.
