The Internet is an amazing instrument for survey research. As long as vehicle reliability research was conducted by snail mail, firms conducted surveys only one a year and took months to release the results.

I developed TrueDelta’s reliability research process to take advantage of the much quicker turnaround times enabled by online surveys. And yet I didn’t imagine how rapidly people respond.

With 11,700 cars currently included in the main survey, there will be about 4,700 responses this month. Most of these roll in almost as soon as the survey email goes out. The email went out today between noon and 1:30. The 1,000th response came in around 3:15. The second 1,000 took longer, nearly ten hours. Before the first follow-up goes out next Tuesday, another 700 or so will respond.

In other words, in the first five days we’ll have more than half of the responses we’ll receive all month.

By the time the monthly update goes out, there will be responses for close to 4,000 vehicles. This will enable a “sneak preview” for members in good standing–just three weeks after the end of the quarter.

Now that TrueDelta has demonstrated what can be done when using the Internet to conduct vehicle reliability research, others can be expected to follow. But we’re far from done innovating–stay tuned.