The 2020 Hyundai Venue is a new SUV offering that’s agile, affordable, and stylish. There’s plenty of room inside for passengers and has many standard driver-assist features. The Venue might not be the best choice to buy if take a lot of long road trips. In the city? It’s got you covered. How reliable is the new Hyundai Venue? What did Consumer Reports have to say about this new Hyundai SUV?

The 2020 Hyundai Venue

The 2020 Hyundai Venue is the newest addition to the automaker’s lineup and the smallest crossover SUV it now offers. It’s even smaller than the Kona.

According to CR, the Venue is more like a subcompact hatchback disguised as an SUV. It offers an excellent selection of standard advanced safety features and good forward visibility. The cabin is surprisingly roomy given the SUV’s size, and the audio and climate controls are easy to navigate. On top of all that, it handles pretty well, and it’s reasonably priced.

It’s not without its problems, according to CR. The interior is basic with firm armrests that aren’t the best for long road trips, and the seats aren’t incredibly supportive. The cabin isn’t insulated against the noise from the engine or the wind. You’ll feel many of the road bumps and imperfections when you’re riding in the Venue as it’s got a pretty rigid suspension.

The Venue has a powertrain that lends itself well to urban driving. It’s got enough zip to navigate and get you around the city with ease. It gets 32 mpg overall and front-wheel drive with no all-wheel-drive available.

Predicted reliability

The CR team assigned the 2020 Hyundai Venue a midrange predicted reliability rating of three out of five. How did it come up with this rating?

Since the Venue is brand new, there are no past data for CR or other consumer sites to determine how reliable it will be. Typically, CR gets data on a vehicle’s reliability from surveys sent to subscribers who own it. They note any troubles with the vehicle in the last 12 months. They’re then asked about the severity of problems and if they resulted in downtime, failure, costly repairs, safety issues, and more.

Predicted reliability is important because it can give you some idea of how much you may pay for services and repairs over the years. It can serve as an indicator of how satisfied you’ll be owning the vehicle. It can also impact its resale value, which is essential when you go to sell it.

It’s a gamble

When a vehicle is brand-new, it’s a risk to buy it. When you have a brand-new vehicle like 2020 Hyundai Venue, you often won’t have a lot of information on how reliable it will be. Predicted reliability is a forecast of how well a new vehicle is likely to do across years of ownership based on recent model year history. Usually, CR will average the reliability scores they’ve given a vehicle over the previous three years so long as it wasn’t redesigned or heavily updated. 

Several years of data are better, they explain. It provides a more robust indicator of how a vehicle will do instead of just basing it on the most recent model. Without such data, CR can look at the reliability of Hyundai as a brand. It can estimate a new vehicle’s reliability based on brand reliability and the reliability scores of similar vehicles with similar major elements.

According to CR, the scores are a prediction and aren’t to be taken as a guarantee of how well any individual car will perform. Using such ratings as a guide when shopping for a new vehicle can help reduce the chance that you’ll end up with a car, which could be riddled with problems resulting in downtime, costly repairs, or safety issues.