Your Vehicle's IQ Score: A Complete Guide

Your Vehicle's IQ Score: A Complete Guide

Scoring your vehicle IQ, or Vehicle IQ Score, can help you understand the condition of your vehicle and prepare you to make effective maintenance decisions in the future. It’s important to keep tabs on the health of your vehicle, because if you don’t, your car won’t start when you need it to, or worse, it will fail while driving, leaving you stranded and putting yourself and others at risk. There are several ways to check the health of your vehicle, one of which is using Vehicle IQ Score to get information about your car that you would not otherwise have known.

What is an IQ score?

An IQ, or intelligence quotient, score is a number that indicates your ability to reason and solve problems. You may have already had an IQ test as part of an academic assessment when you were in school. According to research, most people have an IQ score between 85 and 115.

There is no correct way to calculate a person’s IQ – experts agree that individual results depend on many factors including culture and childhood environment – but most tests assess verbal reasoning abilities, spatial awareness and knowledge of math facts. Although there is no concrete definition for genius level intelligence (IQ 140+), having a high score indicates superior intelligence in any field you choose to pursue.

How do I get my vehicle's score?

There are two ways you can get your score. If you have a smart phone you can download our free app called IQS, it takes about 5 minutes to enter all of your vehicles information, after that simply drive for about 5-10 minutes and then run your vehicle on our system.

The other way is to bring in a DVIR or OBDII scan tool from any repair shop, simply plug it into a OBDII port under your steering wheel and then plug in one of our test units. This will allow us to gather 100% of your vehicle data right at that moment. Once we have all of your data we will run it against our database and provide you with an instant score!

Why should I care about a car's IQ score?

When you get a new car, it seems like a strange thing to think about how its level of intelligence compares to that of other cars. It’s not important. But soon enough you’ll notice that your vehicle just isn’t smart enough for your tastes and needs. It can be frustrating when your mobile device is more capable than something with four wheels, so why would you put up with an inferior level of intelligence in your vehicle? Getting a better vehicle helps make life easier and can even save you money. Knowing what kind of technology is available on each model will help you choose wisely, whether it be for yourself or as a gift for someone else.

What does my vehicle need to achieve an A score?

In order to achieve an A score, vehicles need to meet all of their National Highway Traffic Safety Administration safety standards. (NHTSA is a government agency that establishes and enforces regulations for vehicle safety.) These standards include child restraint anchor points in each seating location as well as passenger airbags in both seating rows.

While there are many different ways manufacturers can achieve an A score, such as installing additional airbags or building stronger roofs, each one must meet NHTSA’s safety requirements in order to receive a perfect grade. While obtaining an A score is no easy feat, you can still improve your vehicle’s overall GPA by taking steps towards bettering its performance.

Should I upgrade my vehicle to achieve a high score?

With more than 100 vehicle attributes evaluated and graded, your auto’s IQ score can give you a good indication of how reliable it is—and if it might be time to upgrade. Depending on

how it scores, your car could be in dire need of an upgrade or completely safe for years to come.

Just keep in mind that as technology advances and new safety standards are implemented, cars do become safer every year. If you find that your car's score isn't very high or is declining over time, we recommend upgrading to a newer model before problems start. Learn more about comparing vehicles at our best-of page .

What if I can't afford the upgrades, or don't want them?

As you may know, vehicle manufacturers are obligated to disclose any defects or malfunctions that are significant enough to violate a federal safety standard. Because of their legal responsibilities, automakers will typically offer a free repair if they cannot correct an issue with your vehicle by replacing certain parts.

If that doesn't sound like it applies to you, give your dealer a call and ask whether they can make some upgrades on your behalf, at no cost. There’s no guarantee that these upgrades will score higher than what you’ve already got, but some dealers have been known to upgrade before selling vehicles even without customers asking for help. If yours doesn’t—or won’t—we recommend skipping ahead and checking out what upgrading yourself would cost with our repair guide below.

Conclusion It’s important to understand how vehicles work, because if you don’t, you might as well be driving a tank around with a blindfold on. If you have any questions about why your vehicle does what it does, or why it does not do what you want it to do, consult an expert who can clarify these issues for you. If a mechanic cannot answer your question, then there is probably some type of issue happening within your car that requires repair immediately before further damage is done.