New cars have found an unexpected weak spot: while overall vehicle quality is improving, infotainment seems stuck in place. In J.D. Power’s 2026 study, multimedia accounted for 25% of all reported problems. In other words, one in every four complaints now comes from the car’s digital side.
Owners reported an average of 42.4 multimedia problems per 100 vehicles. That figure barely changed over the year, and that is exactly the catch: the other major categories improved noticeably. Infotainment was the only major area where quality failed to move forward.
The study surveyed 78,514 buyers and lessees of 2026-model-year vehicles in the United States after their first 90 days of ownership. The findings therefore describe the U.S. market and should not be treated as a universal global scorecard. Still, the trend is hard to ignore: the weak point of a modern car is increasingly found in software rather than under the hood.
“As vehicles become increasingly software-defined, quality problems are shifting from hardware failures to system complexity, software performance and connectivity,” explained J.D. Power representative Lisa Boor.
And this is where things get uncomfortable. All five of the most frequently mentioned problems in the study were tied to multimedia. Some functions are improving, though: satisfaction with built-in navigation jumped 17 points to 933 out of 1000.
For today’s driver, that effectively changes the meaning of a breakdown. A car can run flawlessly, yet a frozen screen, unstable smartphone connection or sluggish interface can sour the experience almost as much as trouble with the engine or transmission. The more a vehicle becomes a computer on wheels, the more visible this new battle for quality becomes.
