Case Study of Four Vehicle Reliability Comparison Based on Survival Analysis

Abstract

The paper is written to analyze the behavior of a selected set of vehicles with different makes, on how they survive after each owner change. The data come from Github. The four cars are Honda Accord, Mini Cooper, Chevy Cavalier, and Toyota Avalon. The two faults are Engine System and Transmission System. The data are from 1996 to 2012. The paper used the Kaplan-Meier curve to survival analysis; the paper also calculates and discusses the self-comparison of each car’s four time periods, the four-stage failure rate through median comparison, and the median comparison of fault conditions in all years. We find that all the vehicle types have gotten better with the years and Toyota vehicles are more reliable than Honda.