Infotainment Systems a 'Growing Reliability Plague,' Says Consumer Reports

Multifunction, cross-linked infotainment systems and related electronics are a “growing reliability plague” for many car brands, Consumer Reports said Monday. First-year models from Cadillac, Fiat, Ford, Honda, Infiniti, Jeep and Ram have seen “significant problem rates from infotainment bugs and glitches,” it said. Of the 17 problem areas Consumer Reports asks about in its Annual Reliability Survey, the category encompassing in-car electronics generated more complaints than any other category, it said. Problems included multi-use controllers that don’t function properly, unresponsive touch screens and challenges pairing phones to the vehicle, the report said. “Infotainment system problems generally don't exist in a vacuum," said Jake Fisher, director-automotive testing at Consumer Reports. Cars with a lot of in-vehicle electronic issues “usually have plenty of other troubles, too,” Fisher said. Infinity’s Q50 sedan tops the list of problem vehicles in the report with more than 20 percent of owners reporting a glitch. The Infiniti QX60 SUV, also rated low in reliability, dropping Infiniti’s reliability rank 14 points to 20th overall, the farthest drop of any of the 28 brands this year, Consumer Reports said. Some carmakers showed improvement in infotainment problems, it said. “While hardly trouble-free, updates and changes to Ford and Lincoln's notorious MyTouch systems have made them less troublesome year after year,” Consumer Reports said. In 2011, the Ford Explorer had a 10 percent infotainment complaint rate and peaked at 28 percent, but the 2014 Explorer's revised system improved to a 3 percent complaint rate for the same trouble areas, it said. Honda appears to have fixed a glitch with HondaLink that kept the redesigned Accord V6 off of last year’s recommended vehicle list, and the vehicle is now recommended, Consumer Reports said, and Chrysler's UConnect touch-screen system “was buggy in its first iteration but recent software revisions may be ironing out the wrinkles." The survey was sent to more than 8 million subscribers, and 1.1 million responses were received. The survey asks about subscribers' experiences with their vehicles over the course of the previous 12 months and covers 10 model years -- from brand-new models to models that are 10 years old, it said.