alt Hacker News> Volkswagen brands were at the top of my list for many reasons
You should definitely reevaluate how you constructed your list. VW has a history of being scummy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_emissions_scandal) and their ICE cars are notorious for being unreliable compared to the Japanese car-makers. To be fair, EVs do change the equation a bit, but given their scandal plagued past, there's no way I would put them at the top of any list.
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I currently own a 10 year old Seat Leon with not a single out of maintenance repair (if we ignore the cosmetic repair due to a wildlife encounter). My parents have owned multiple VW vehicles, with each of these lasting >15 years without major issues. I know they have a reputation of being unreliable compared to Toyota, but that hasn't been my personal experience and equally important: they do not look like a Toyota. And Mazda has awful EVs
Putting these factors aside: they are usually cheaper than their peers in insurance and they have dealerships absolutely everywhere. I've had multiple Skoda and VW EV rentals and the experience has been nothing but pleasant. Hence my priorities.
The emissions scandal is completely different, because in that case they were illicitly making the car work better for its owner.
As opposed to the rest of the auto industry which has a stellar track record of adhering to emissions and fuel economy regulations /s
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel_emissions_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defeat_device
> their ICE cars are notorious for being unreliable compared to the Japanese car-makers.
I always read this online, but my personal experience in EU doesn't match that at all in quite a sample of people and cars over the last ~15 years. At least not for older cards. The reliability after 100k km seems to be somewhat similar.
The repairability of VW-group stuff in 3rd party services is soo much better and cheaper. The WV-group is huge and many models across the brands share same parts and full engines. There exist non-OEM alternatives and people know how to fix those cars.
I have never bought new car. But driving anything but VW got expensive fast.
Toyota cars can have bespoke parts even between different months of the same year for the same model. Continuous improvement isn't really that cool for cars.