Not to say that Toyota hasn't also experimented with stranger drivetrains, but they generally seem to have branched out less than Honda as an example.
Subaru is a bit of an outlier. Great quality with huge exceptions (NA head gaskets, problematic CVT), and that terrific flat four.
If I wanted those things, I would go buy a Highlander or other SUV-shaped car lacking the ability to go from pavement to AWD to 4WD to locked diffs if I get really crazy.
I like to call my off-road truck (rig in the vernacular) 'too dumb to hack'. Not that it has any meaningful security, but it is only electronic, there is not enough digital logic for there to be any attack surface worth exploiting, and even if there were some exploit, it cannot do much more than shut down the engine due to faulty timings.
I always chalked up reliability as a function of new tech introduction + focus on reliability. I figured Porsche gets decent numbers because of how relatively low-tech they are and the ridiculous prices they charge for optioning-in that tech (basic things like ACC or memory seats).
Is there something else organizationally, process or product wise that Porsche does differently than the VW group? I do know that they have a separate factory w/ seperate engineering departments (:cough VW engineers design Lamborghini's).
https://blog.grabcad.com/blog/2018/10/08/porsche-and-lean-ma...
That being said, Tesla went back to early Ford for the full top-down flow system - and it's working for them. So while I love the TPS system and use it in my company, I'm willing to keep on learning.
Reliability was always a selling point for Porsches relative to their competitor. You could buy a 308 and be constantly fixing it, or a 911 and (so long as you didn't put it in a ditch) you'd have an everyday driver.
The fact that it's dropping suggests that they're feeling the effects of VW's ownership, crapping their designs up.
There's a lot of weaknesses that show up a lot quicker when you're holding an engine at redline.
They share some functions like brake SW or ACC, but they do their own engine and chassis.
Otherwise they source their stuff alone, and due to the low sales number they struggle to find willing suppliers.
https://www.reddit.com/r/cars/comments/nr4awu/which_expensiv...
As a personal anecdote: my 2003 VW (1.8T GTI) had 330,000km when I sold it to a friend (it continues to run strong, but not sure the KMs). I did all the work myself and I did it on time. Biggest repair was AC Compressor, the rest was just routine maintenance and a couple $50 sensors. If a CEL came on I addressed it as soon as possible. At the same time, I had a friend with a similar year Jetta TDI which lit on fire around the 290k mark. Every time I was in her car the CEL was on, and I remember driving it home on a road trip once where you'd hold the pedal to the floor the whole way just to keep it at the highway speed limit.
Down to 9/26 from last years 4/26. Compared to VW's 24/26 that's quite a large delta.
TBH some of ranking on the list makes anecdotal sense (Toyota is #2). Others do not (Mazda as #1?!).
I'm questioning Consumer Reports methodology, how far back do they look? If it's only a sliding window of <3yrs I do not believe thats enough data.
You'd think that people would be willing to pay more for better mileage (and no, it's not due to weight differences of the premium equipment). I know my relative who was looking at hybrid Camrys would have been happy to pay more to have both the best MPG and various other features. Instead, they got the cheap model and added the blind spot monitors and called it a day.
It's worth noting, though, that as fuel efficiency goes up each increment in mpg is less valuable, so 6-7 mpg on a car that already gets 50 mpg is not as useful as 6-7 mpg on a car that gets 20 mpg. This is because the thing you're trying to minimize (fuel burned) is in the denominator of the measure. Countries that measure fuel economy in L/100km don't have this problem. Engineering Explained does a good job of showing how the math works out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLQmwOX6Xds
I completely agree with your assessment of the MPG difference. I tried explaining this to my relative, to no avail. The number for one vehicle was under 50 MPG and the number for the other vehicle was over 50 MPG, so it was a mental sticking point that I could not overcome.
The Prius was ground-breaking work; had Chevron not killed NiMH batteries, they would have been shipping mainstream electric RAV4s in the 90s. Toyota are very happy to innovate where they think they can deliver to a high standard.
However, this gives them a huge advantage in the reliability field as what is put into their cars is known/proven/shown to be extremely reliable.