Electrical automobiles improved within the 2025 J.D. Energy Car Dependability Research however plug-in hybrids acquired worse.
Launched Thursday, the annual research focuses on the speed of issues with new automobiles, as reported by house owners, with scores assigned based mostly on issues per 100 automobiles. The brand new outcomes are based mostly on issues skilled by the unique house owners of automobiles going again to the 2022 mannequin yr. The pattern included 34,175 responses from house owners gathered from August by means of November of 2024.
EVs improved by 33 issues per 100 automobiles in comparison with the earlier yr’s research, whereas plug-in hybrids noticed a rise of 26 issues per 100 automobiles in comparison with final yr, when EVs have been discovered to be the most trouble-prone automobiles.
2024 Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid
The hole between EVs and gasoline automobiles additionally narrowed considerably, J.D. Energy famous, now standing at 223 issues per 100 automobiles and 200 issues per 100 automobiles, respectively. Plug-in hybrids have been essentially the most problematic, at 242 reported points per 100 automobiles. Hybrids fared the perfect; such fashions with no plug skilled the fewest issues, at 199 per 100 automobiles.
In a earlier research, J.D. Energy underscored that the powertrains aren’t accountable for all these points; somewhat it has been all the opposite tech that debuts in EVs. The 2025 Car Dependability Research signifies that tech-related points have gotten extra prevalent throughout the auto trade, with software program connectivity points among the many most frequent proprietor complaints, and simply 30% of householders saying that they noticed enhancements after over-the-air updates.
2022 Audi Q5 55 TFSI e plug-in hybrid
That contributed to a worse efficiency, as averaged throughout your entire trade, on this yr’s research. The trade as an entire noticed issues per 100 automobiles improve by 6%, averaging 202 issues per 100 automobiles.
However EVs proceed to carry out extra poorly than different automobiles in these research. J.D. Energy additionally famous a increased charge of owner-reported issues for EVs, in comparison with the trade common, in its 2024 Preliminary High quality Research. Client Reviews’ annual reliability survey in late 2023 discovered that automobiles that plug in, general, are extra trouble-prone—and it famous that particularly applies to plug-in hybrids.
