Costing a new car warranty

The reliability of a motor vehicle depends on the reliability of its numerous components. Failure data from an Australian automobile manufacturer have been analyzed in this paper and a distribution to represent the failure data has been sought. Cost models for honoring a two-year/50,000 km warranty have been developed. As failed components have been replaced with new ones, the process has been modeled as a renewal. Numerical methods have been used to solve the renewal equation. Both in-warranty and post-warranty claims have been considered and models have been developed for each case. The cost of maintaining a two-year warranty has then been compared with the cost of extended warranties of three and five years.