Things don’t necessarily get better with time. . .

By Gary S. Vasilash

In the J.D. Power 2022 Initial Quality Study, which looks at how owners feel about vehicles they’ve had for 90 days, things had gone south compared to the study performed for 2021.

The research organization has released figures for the 2025 U.S. Vehicle Dependability study, which is based on how owners feel about their vehicles three years later.

Not so good at the start. Not so good now.

That is, J.D. Power uses a metric called “problems per 100 vehicles” (PP 100).

The 2025 study finds that the industry average is 202 PP 100, which is a 6% increase (or 12 PP 100) compared to people who had owned their vehicles three years last year.

The primary problem is software.

Connecting Android Auto and Apple CarPlay to the vehicle is the top problem. Odds are, this is a problem with the OEMs, not the folks in Cupertino or Mountain View.

J.D. Power says that half of the top 10 problems are related to smartphone integration, usage or connectivity.

Now one of the features that is being boasted about by vehicle manufacturers is “over-the-air” (OTA) update capability. This means just like for your smartphone software can be sent to your OTA-capable vehicle and functions can improved or fixed.

Of those surveyed for the 2025 study, 36% said they’ve performed an OTA during their time with their vehicle.

Then the proverbial shoe drops. . .

• 30% of those owners said there was an improvement after the OTAs. Or 70% evidently didn’t see much in the way of a change.
• 56% said there was no noticeable improvement. Which presumably means that if that 70% perceived hints, this 56% saw nothing.

OEMs are busy working on “software-defined vehicles.” Which means, in part, there can be improvements to a vehicle over its lifetime by the addition of new functions and features. . .through OTAs.

Given what J.D. Power is finding there are probably a lot of people who are not going to speed to their local dealerships when the software-defined vehicles become available.

And it leads to the question of whether the OEMs are really any good at software.

To be sure, things have gotten better between now and then, but odds are if you own a three-year old iPhone or Samsung Galaxy, it was good when you got it and is good today. And there are new features to your phone between then and now, and odds are they work as expected.

Some companies are just better in some areas than they are in others, even if they don’t want to admit it.