Nik Rajkovic / news@whmi.com

Consumer Reports finds electric vehicles are less reliable than conventional cars and trucks.

On average, the non-profit found new EVs had 79% more problems than gasoline-powered vehicles, Consumer Reports' 2023 Annual Auto Reliability survey showed.

“They’re just not reliable right now,” says AP correspondent Tim Krisher. “That said, Consumer Reports said it’s starting to see trends showing EVs are getting more reliable and starting to close the gap with internal combustion engine vehicles, but they’re not there yet.”

“A lot of it is battery and electric motor problems, simply because it’s a new technology. There are software flaws that have to be fixed,” Krisher added. “There are some new manufacturers as well, and they don’t know how to put the things together as well as an older manufacturer. So they’ve got problems with body panels having gaps that are too wide, or interior parts that don’t fit together as well as they should.”

Hybrid vehicles had fewer issues than gasoline ones, while plug-in hybrids had 146% more problems.