license: cc-by-4.0
language:
- en
pretty_name: US Vehicle Reliability Scorecard (NHTSA, MY 2005-2025)
tags:
- automotive
- vehicles
- nhtsa
- vehicle-reliability
- recalls
- reliability-score
- open-data
- consumer-data
size_categories:
- 1K<n<10K
configs:
- config_name: default
data_files:
- split: train
path: vehicle-reliability-scorecard.csv
Vehicle Reliability Scorecard
One row per vehicle (year + make + model) with its ProblemsByVin reliability score, total NHTSA complaints, recalls, and defect investigations, plus the single component owners complain about most. The master index across the whole tracked fleet — the flat table to join every other dataset to.
Columns
| column | meaning |
|---|---|
year |
Model year |
make |
Manufacturer |
model |
Model |
reliability_score |
1.0 (worst) – 5.0 (best); shown on site as ×2 out of 10 |
complaints |
Total NHTSA owner complaints |
recalls |
Total NHTSA recalls |
investigations |
NHTSA ODI defect investigations touching this vehicle |
top_component |
Component category with the most complaints |
top_component_complaints |
Complaints in that top component |
worst_severity |
Highest cluster severity: critical | severe | moderate |
alleged_deaths |
Complaints alleging a death (unverified) |
alleged_fires |
Complaints alleging a fire (unverified) |
url |
Vehicle page on ProblemsByVin |
Source & methodology
The reliability score is a TRANSPARENT heuristic on a 1.0 (worst) – 5.0 (best) scale (the site shows it ×2, out of 10). It starts at 5.0 and subtracts log10(complaints + 1) × 0.55, 0.30 per critical recall, and 0.10 per severe recall. It is a complaint-and-recall-VOLUME signal, NOT a per-capita failure rate: we do not yet have sales/registration denominators, so higher-volume models can score lower simply because more of them are on the road. "top_component" is the component category with the most complaints for that vehicle. Alleged death/fire counts are sums of unverified consumer allegations across the vehicle’s complaints. Motorcycles are excluded (this site is cars-only).
Canonical version, full methodology, and the other datasets: https://problemsbyvin.com/data/ .
License
CC BY 4.0 — free to use with attribution to ProblemsByVin (https://problemsbyvin.com).