It’s based on first year reliability. Decades ago, most new cars needed service (i.e. something broke or QA missed something) in their first year. The average rate of these issues was a pretty good indicator of reliability as the car aged, although you’d need to apply a multiplier as things wore out over time.
I don’t know if it’s still a meaningful indicator these days.
A car with ten features is less likely to have an issue than a car with 1000.
On one side yes that’s a measure of likelihood of having issues.
But on the other hand if the car with ten features has a failure with each one, it’s not going to be a great car to drive compared to a car with 1000 features that has failures on 11.
It’s based on first year reliability. Decades ago, most new cars needed service (i.e. something broke or QA missed something) in their first year. The average rate of these issues was a pretty good indicator of reliability as the car aged, although you’d need to apply a multiplier as things wore out over time.
I don’t know if it’s still a meaningful indicator these days.
The issue with it is it favors simple cars.
A car with ten features is less likely to have an issue than a car with 1000.
On one side yes that’s a measure of likelihood of having issues.
But on the other hand if the car with ten features has a failure with each one, it’s not going to be a great car to drive compared to a car with 1000 features that has failures on 11.