CR CX-9 Reliability Nosedive

Even that is a small sample size. It seems like a huge group of people, but in reality, it's only a few hundred people who are more likely offer unsolicited complaints than unsolicited praise.

What I mean is at least you get detailed discussion about each model. Even if it's relatively a small percentage of sales, it's very indicative of how the vehicle is doing. If it's 100 owners, that actually represents pretty accurately what's going on because production overall is very consistent. If no CX-9 owner on Mazdas247 has had a single transmission issue, it's pretty safe to say it's initially trouble free across production. Reading CR tells you very little except giving you some silly number.
 
I keep wondering what happens when all of today's cars are 10 or 15 or never mind 20 years old. If so many of these cars have infotainment issues out of the gate, do we really think automakers will have fixes years down the road? Is there going to become a huge aftermarket to just replace all these units? That won't be easy with fully integrated units. Take the Volvo XC-90. Large screen controls just about everything and has had problems since launch. If that doesn't work, the whole car is useless. Imagine having today's smartphone fixed 15 years from now? How about connectivity? Do we really think all future phones will connect to the Bluetooth in the cars we're buying now? Hell, people have trouble connecting current phones with current cars. The industry is really setting up a bunch of problems.


They are already hacking the Mazda CMU. AIO-Tweaks is an example of that. One step further would be something similar to what you suggest - an all out after market CMU replacement.

Bluetooth, will probably be a round for quite sometime, however. Its now entering ubiquity and cutting across all sectors which means multiple product types will be using it, if not already. There is still lots of room for Bluetooth to grow. An example would be the fact that right now, as I type, Pilatus is going through official certification of their newest aircraft concept the PC-24. It is a Very Light Jet which will seat 6-8 comfortably and be single-pilot certified. That aircraft will be Bluetooth enabled, not just in the Cabin but also in the Cockpit. In fact, right now, there are Bluetooth Pilot Headsets (just bought my first pair) beginning to pick-up favor with pilots both private and commercial. So, I think Bluetooth is going to be with us for quite a while given the simplicity of the technology behind it.

Regarding the "Fully Integrated" Head Units. This too was for years a hot topic of conversation in general aviation. That conversation has pretty much been put to sleep as the move towards full cockpit integration of avionics that places everything into a singular system (engine monitoring, aircraft systems & performance information, navigation & flight planning, flight instrumentation information, etc.) all under essentially one roof or what are called PDF (Primary Flight Displays) and MFD (Multi-Function Displays) has been underway for a while now. And, as you say, we pilots wanted to know what happens when the lights go out! Or, more to the point, what happens when the PFD goes out?

We now know the answer. The system is Fault Tolerant, Redundant and Failover Protected - so what was the the MFD now becomes the default screen during an inflight outage of PFD. All required information for SOF (Safety Of Flight) is cast over to the MFD and the aircraft is flown in routine fashion. After landing, the mechanic repairs or replacing the faulted unit and puts the aircraft back in service after signing off on their work.

Getting that level of fault tolerance, redundancy and failover into a mass produced vehicle is not impossible - but I can imagine it would push up the costs somewhat if not carefully designed. And, it would have to be a Single Screen solution as you would not want to drive around with multiple Screens in your vehicle. How you get there would take some creative engineering design work and I suspect it would also require a lot of back-end architecture that isolated individual functions that come through the screen such that when/if they fail, they don't take the entire CMU system with it down the tubes (so to speak).

Like this morning, after doing a TPMS and Maintenance Schedule (Oil Interval) initialization, the CMU would not boot after starting the engine. I had to shut down the engine then re-start a second time to get the unit to boot itself. If the system was fault tolerant, the failure in the TPMS and Maintenance Schedule initialization would not have been enough to hang the entire system causing an engine shutdown/restart sequence. That kind of design can be done on the coding side of the system without requiring multiple screens to cast remaining systems information that survives the fault.
 
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They are already hacking the Mazda CMU. AIO-Tweaks is an example of that. One step further would be something similar to what you suggest - an all out after market CMU replacement.

Bluetooth, will probably be a round for quite sometime, however. Its now entering ubiquity and cutting across all sectors which means multiple product types will be using it, if not already. There is still lots of room for Bluetooth to grow. An example would be the fact that right now, as I type, Pilatus is going through official certification of their newest aircraft concept the PC-24. It is a Very Light Jet which will seat 6-8 comfortably and be single-pilot certified. That aircraft will be Bluetooth enabled, not just in the Cabin but also in the Cockpit. In fact, right now, there are Bluetooth Pilot Headsets (just bought my first pair) beginning to pick-up favor with pilots both private and commercial. So, I think Bluetooth is going to be with us for quite a while given the simplicity of the technology behind it.

Bluetooth is getting better and more wideley used. The xbox wireless controls uses some kind of bluetooth. My Sony bluetooth headphones have an amazing quality (I read audio bluetooth in the first years was terrible). You will see more and more bluetooth everywhere. It's like USB... when we see USB at the 90's we discover was a great feature/technology, but slow (usb1 = 12Mbps), usb2 is available since several years ago, 480Mbps and USB3 is really, really fast (you can record 3k videos on an usb3 interface). You see usb now everywhere, from audio home theathers to cars and even medical equipment.
 
OT rant: Bluetooth, after what,15 years now, if still janky AF. It's gotten better, but it's still has annoying issues, including latency. It was never design for the Internet of Things. They really need to start over with a modern protocol.
 
I had a conversation CR today about the reliability rating. I learned the following:
3 significant problem areas are showing up:
> In car electronics, which includes infotainment as well as things like power seats and heat, windows, sunroof, back up camera etc.
> Body integrity, issues are usually rusting, or parts that are poorly connected like bumper failures and things like that. They had some reports of body rusting on these vehicles very early on. It could be a situation of climate, or other circumstances, but they feel it is definitely a concern in a new vehicle.
> Brakes, they had reports of issues with braking after several months of ownership in their annual survey; with brakes having to be repaired prematurely. They would expect that they should last some time before initial repairs are required on a new vehicle, and these needed repairs rather quickly.

By definition, if they are "forecasting" reliability it is based on an extrapolation from prior history.

They also suggested that Mazda is aware of their concerns and issues. The big unknown is how long it will take for Mazda to fix the issues going forward, and at what point it will impact the production of new vehicles. It will then take some period of time for those changes to improve the reliability metrics.
 
I think the infotainment is very laggy on our CX-5 when first started and the backup camera has failed to come on a few times.
 
I had a conversation CR today about the reliability rating. I learned the following:
3 significant problem areas are showing up:
> In car electronics, which includes infotainment as well as things like power seats and heat, windows, sunroof, back up camera etc.
> Body integrity, issues are usually rusting, or parts that are poorly connected like bumper failures and things like that. They had some reports of body rusting on these vehicles very early on. It could be a situation of climate, or other circumstances, but they feel it is definitely a concern in a new vehicle.
> Brakes, they had reports of issues with braking after several months of ownership in their annual survey; with brakes having to be repaired prematurely. They would expect that they should last some time before initial repairs are required on a new vehicle, and these needed repairs rather quickly.

By definition, if they are "forecasting" reliability it is based on an extrapolation from prior history.

They also suggested that Mazda is aware of their concerns and issues. The big unknown is how long it will take for Mazda to fix the issues going forward, and at what point it will impact the production of new vehicles. It will then take some period of time for those changes to improve the reliability metrics.

Do they actually publish this info somewhere?
 
Are we really to believe people have rust on 1 year old CX-9's???

I've never seen a spot of rust on a 2007 CX-9 in New England. And that was the Ford days.
 
Are we really to believe people have rust on 1 year old CX-9's???

I don't believe you can find rust in a one-year-old cx9.

My cx9 2016 turbo has now one and a half year now and I don't have issues with power seats, windows, sunroof, the backup camera, rusting, engine and most items, but I have this issues:

1- infotainment (GPS) not working. this happens 6 months ago. I don't see more this issue but because I now use Waze
2- noises! a lot... like an old car: every time I pass a street bump... noises when brake, everybody looks at me on the street, pretty annoying. This is a signal of low quality brake pads or maintenance need it?. My cx9 2011 never ever had issues with brakes up to 30k miles.
3- when I open the tailgate, noises... more noises... like oil is needed it. (any advice?)
 
Are we really to believe people have rust on 1 year old CX-9's???

I've never seen a spot of rust on a 2007 CX-9 in New England. And that was the Ford days.

More skeletons coming out of the closet!
 
Well, has anyone in this forum had any of the issues that CR reported? I have a few issues with the screen not displaying, but no issues with rust.... or brakes... however I just recently noticed a noise when braking on low speed when shifting from R to D...
 
Well, has anyone in this forum had any of the issues that CR reported? I have a few issues with the screen not displaying, but no issues with rust.... or brakes... however I just recently noticed a noise when braking on low speed when shifting from R to D...

I haven't seen any complaints about brakes on here in a while. Odd. The old model had issues with brake rotors warping but I had not seen any complaints about that on the new one.

The "body integrity"/rust could have been some very early build issues that got fixed quickly...
 
Not a single brake squeak or anything on mine.
Same here, not an issue to speak of (yet) but I'm only at 1000 miles and counting. One of the reasons I intentionally waited for the third year run of the new model, hopefully, the "bugs" have been worked out already.
 
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