BMW X5 (E53) reliability - how does it compare?
 

In late 2005 I started conducting my own reliability research. I'm reporting absolute stats like "times in the shop" that will make the differences between cars much clearer. Relative ratings obscure too much--how large is the difference between "better than average" and "worse than average"? I’ll also be updating results four times a year, so any bump in repair rates will be evident sooner.

I haven't started collecting data on the BMW X5 yet because too few owners are signed up to help out.

Participants report repairs the month after they occur on a one-page survey. When there are no repairs, they simply report an approximate odometer reading four times a year, at the end of each quarter.

To encourage participation, panel members will receive full access to the results free of charge.

For the details, and to sign up:

Vehicle reliability research

Comments, questions, and suggestions welcome.

Don't you think your research is going to be very biased? A good portion of our members joined because they needed to troubleshoot. Statistically, this is no where close to 'random'.

I'm asked this question often. It's a good one.

I do one thing differently from every other reliability study I'm aware of: with the exception of the first month, I only collect data on problems going forward. So, unlike with other surveys, people do not know what they will be reporting at the time they decide to participate.

For the typical model in the panel, 70-80% of panel members do not report a single repair trip in their first six months of responses. For some models the percentage is over 90.

So I don't appear to mostly be getting people with problems to report.

Some people do want to report their repair histories. So I created a separate survey for this. This second survey is not required of members, it's purely voluntary. And I would expect its results to be biased.

So are you going to compare this to other cars in its class,ie Cayenne?
By the way, which X5 do you have?

As long as you know so, I suppose there isn't too much of a problem.

I don't own an X5. I'm hoping to eventually provide data on every model with sales volumes of 1,000 per month or more. X5 competitors that I'm already collecting data on include the MDX and Q7 (2007 models in both cases, though).

The results pages for the Repair History Survey (up, but not yet linked anywhere on the site till I have more responses) state that they should not be taken as any indication of repair rates, but only as an indication of problems that might happen.

Excellent :thumbup:

Thanks. The Repair Histories have since been linked to the home page. Just three so far from X5 owners, though.

Also still not collecting reliability data on the X5--need more owners to sign up first.

So let me inquire. Are you a rep for TrueDelta? Or do you own the company?

I own it, and perform 99% of the work. Started out as just a personal project. Taught myself programming and database design to do it.

can you post a link to your results in this thread?

Latest results are here:

TrueDelta Vehicle Reliability Survey results

The next set will be posted in August.

I still have not started collecting data on any year of the X5 because too few owners have signed up to participate. I am collecting data on most competitors, including the Acura MDX, Audi Q7, and Mercedes GL. The Acura and Audi will be included in the August results.

For the details, and to sign up:

Vehicle reliability research

About halfway to the minimum now for the 2001 and 2002.

reliability and x5 hardly go hand in hand.

The reliability results in Consumer Report pretty much hits the nail on the head regarding the problems / breakdowns I've had with its red, half red, clear half black and black dots for the respective categories...

I'm not sure how much more value you are going to add by conducting your own study...

My approach has two main advantages over CR:

1. Actual repair rates posted, not just dots. The differences are often smaller than the dots lead people to believe.

2. Results updated promptly four times a year, and average over ten months fresher than those of CR. When shopping for a car, do you want to know how reliable it was over a year ago, when it was a year younger, or how reliable it has been lately?

Until CR releases their latest results in a few weeks, they're still using data for the year that ended back in March 2006. And even when they update they'll be covering the year through March 2007. When they talk about "three-year-old cars," for example, they're really talking about cars that were 1.5 to 2.5 years old at the time of the survey.

The results I post in a few weeks will be for the year ending September 2007 and will even include one early 2008 model. When enough owners sign up quickly, I have results on new models very quickly.

For additional differences and more detail:

Consumer Reports critique

In response to requests, I've added a Common Auto Repairs Database (CARDb) to my site.

Currently it's just possible to add common repairs to the database. When the database has been populated, owners will be asked to report whether or not their car has actually had these problems. So we can find out how common "common repairs" actually are.

My suspicion: usually less common than people think.

The form includes a field for a forum thread URL, so people can be directed here for thorough discussions if there is a thread discussing the repair. I hope this will help make more people aware of this excellent forum in addition to providing more details about the repair.

Common Auto Repairs Database (CARDb)

Current counts, 25 needed to start:

2001: 16
2002: 14
2003: 10
2004: 7
2005: 10
2006: 7

The first couple of years are over half way. The others...well, we'll get there.

Vehicle reliability research

Which nav unit do you have? There are replacement dash units with the large 16:9 screen available. try Bimmernav.com

108 X5 owners now signed up. A decent start, but not enough to include any model year in the survey.

Vehicle reliability research

Ten more have signed up, and some model years are now 3/4 of the way to the minimum.

Vehicle reliability research

don't think it's going to be a fair result,

most first hand X5 owners don't spend much time on car forums

from my market research experience

a phone survey to randomly sampled owners would be much more better

The research design largely compensates for the lack of a random sample by having people participate continuously, beginning with when they sign up.

Would I prefer to survey a random sample of vehicle owners on a monthly basis? Sure, if the response rate were high--which it wouldn't be. And even if the response rate were 100 percent, no one would pay the resulting cost of the research--such a survey would cost millions.

What I have is a method that yields surprisingly robust results, with low enough costs that I can provide the results for free to anyone who participates.

not interested in challenging your bussiness, but low cost results might be misleading results too.

I feel the proof is in the results themselves. A few seem off, and I've commented them as such. But this is more a matter of the small sample sizes than the source of the sample.

Here are the results for the BMW 3-Series, in successful repair trips per 100 cars per year, with an * if the sample size is small, and the average odometer in ( ):

2000 200* (119600)
2001 135 (73000)
2002 151* (71500)
2003 104* (56500)
2004 75 (41200)
2005 69* (33900)
2006 68 (24900)
2007 52 (10200)
2008 31 (7300)

Though half of these years have sample sizes below my minimum, we still get a nice clean curve, especially from 2002 on. The repair rate for the 2000 seems a bit high, and that for the 2001 a bit low, but the odometer readings likely account for this--those 2000s have a lot of miles on them. Did the 2000 MY begin early for the E46?

again, you don't get my point, no offending, but i am a quantitative analyst with a math PhD degree, used to work in a market research firm, so if my firm asked me to do the research, I would do it in a proper way, such as being equipped/backed by statistics and sampling theories and covering all customers rather some a small portion, in this case the small portion only includes those who get on the internet and come across ur website.

Some of your results could appear correct, but some of them may be misleading. you can't use part of your results to evaluate/proof your methodology.

Nevertheless I get where you come from, at least you can demonstrate some results, not always right, but perhaps better than no result.

um... do I sound like a nerd, again?????? Damn, stop it!!

You sound fine to me, and I get your point.

The key thing to realize, and that often escapes people at first glance, is that this isn't an opinion poll. With an opinion poll it is critical to have as representative a sample as possible.

In this case, it's important to ask how the people who are being sampled are likely to differ from the general population, AND how this might affect the results.

Ways forum visitors might differ from the general population:
1. Drive more aggressively
2. More likely to mod
3. Might maintain their cars better
4. Might notice a problem with their car only after hearing of it on a forum
5. Came to the forum because they have been having problems

Of these, I'm most concerned about #3 and #5. But looking at the details of the repairs that are reported, the great majority, including the many electrical problems people report:

1. Could not have been caused by how the car was driven
2. Could not have been caused by a mod (and respondents are asked if their cars are heavily modded--few are)
3. Could not have been prevented by maintenance--there's no way to maintain a window regulator, for example; that said, maintainable parts do fail more often with older cars, so this becomes more of a factor with those
4. Are problems that anyone would notice
5. Occurred after the person learned of the research and signed up

Yes, there might be some distortion from the above factors, but not enough to render the results misleading unless someone is trying to split finer hairs than I'd suggest. This isn't a presidential election poll, where a result that is off by more than a couple percentage points would be misleading.

124 X5 owners signed up to participate so far. A good start, but more are needed.

Vehicle reliability research

I participate in your research forum, but I am surprised that 2 of
my cars: '01 X5 and '02 Vette are not in the hunt, due to lack
of respondents for those years/car(s).

NEway, our CRV-Fridge makes the list.

The reliability report is pretty interesting for the cars "enrolled", imo.
BR,mD

Supergreg wrote about this thread more than a year ago
as noted below. So I'm asking can somebody help me out
with this thread today?

How can this person continue to sell a product under the
guise that there will be some benefit to X5world but never
produces anything we can use?

I'm viewing this thread as a free site advertising medium.
I believe this person and his company needs to at least follow
the rules for selling on this site.

Am I wrong about this????

As I believe I've mentioned before, but perhaps I haven't, I communicated with SuperGreg via PM after the post in question.

Our agreement was that in exchange for allowing this thread I would link back to this forum, which I did and continue to do, and would post results for the X5 here, which I will do as soon as there are any to post.