Glad to hear of so many people without problems. It's a little confusing as to whether the Renegade is guaranteed to break down, or if its perfectly fine.
I'll tell you what I think, others will probably disagree.
1) I think it has an issue rate higher than most vehicles, but given the state of vehicles these days That means 2-3 issues.
2) I think the higher issue rate is mostly going to be mostly due to process issues. Most cars in the upper half of reliability, the issues are usually just early part mortality (nothing is 100% perfect 100% of the time) and assembly oopses. I think on top of that FCA brands have to deal with the rushed and poorly thought out deployment of the vehicle. Forum members very easily see how odd it looks in the buying process, but it probably causes as many issues with regard to running the assembly line and managing the supply chain from vendors.
3) I think that on top of that, the ZF 9 is a weird transmission, and while differences in the design of the drive train between the cherokee and renegade likely means less people unhappy with it, I think there's just a certain contingent of the driving population that is going to be unhappy with it. In terms of actual failure, it's not doing worse than the industry as a whole.
4) As fallout form
#2 , you then have to deal with the issue of satisfactory resolution. A very new vehicle like this is going to have parts supply issues, and in this day and age probably need a software update or two, but with the FCA rushed rollout, and the FCA lean parts supply pipeline even without the rollout, it may take more visits to get your stuff sorted out either because the cart is getting ahead of the horse on software issues outpacing patches, or because you are waiting on parts longer than you would with another brand.
