New research from Scrap Car Comparison has revealed which of the world’s best-selling vehicles–from electric cars to motorbikes and trucks–have the longest owner’s manuals, as well as the ones which are the most difficult to read.
The study analysed 90 vehicle owner’s manuals, to reveal the word count and readability of each document, as well as calculating how long it would take to read each one, based on an average reading time of 238 words per minute. The research also compared this with analysis of some of the world’s most well-loved fictional titles, including War and Peace, The Lord of The Rings series, and The Da Vinci Code.
The 10 vehicle manuals which require the most time to read
The longest vehicle manual according to the analysis was from the Audi R8, which contains 616,064 words spread over 308 pages, equating to 43 hours and 9 minutes of reading time. When compared to popular fictional texts, the Audi R8 manual is over 28,000 words and 2 hours of reading longer than Tolstoy’s War and Peace, and requires just under three hours more reading-time the entire Lord of The Rings book series.
The research revealed that the average manual length stands at 109,106 words long, meaning the Audi R8 manual is nearly 6 times longer, with the manual of the Audi e-tron following very closely behind in second position with 603,649 words cover to cover. Audi featured four times in the top 20 longest manuals, with the R8, e-tron, A3 and Q2 each having above-average reading times of over 10 hours.
| Rank | Vehicle Make & Model | Manual Word Count | Average Time To Read |
| 1 | Audi R8 | 616,064 | 43 hours 9 minutes |
| 2 | Audi e-tron | 603,649 | 42 hours 16 minutes |
| 3 | Ford F-Series | 194,305 | 13 hours 36 minutes |
| 4 | Ram Pickup 1500 | 177,196 | 12 hours 24 minutes |
| 5 | Audi A3 | 174,181 | 12 hours 11 minutes |
| 6 | Volvo XC40 | 171,457 | 12 hours |
| 7 | Volkswagen ID.4 | 168,060 | 11 hours 46 minutes |
| 8 | Jeep Gladiator | 163,857 | 11 hours 28 minutes |
| 9 | Ford Focus | 163,225 | 11 hours 25 minutes |
| 10 | GMC Sierra | 158,194 | 11 hours 4 minutes |
The 10 vehicle manuals which require the shortest time to read
Electric scooter Vmoto Super Soco CPX is the vehicle with the shortest owner’s manual, taking just 11 minutes to read, with only 2,834 words. The Honda NSC 110 Vision and Honda VB125F motorcycles follow to make up the top three vehicles with the most succinct manuals, taking around an hour each to read.
Honda motorcycles rank four times in the top ten, each with manuals of under 23,500 words – taking less than two hours to read. Only three of the top ten vehicles were cars (rather than motorbikes) with the Range Rover Evoque, Nissan Leaf and VW Polo all having particularly punchy manuals to read through.
| Rank | Vehicle Make & Model | Manual Word Count | Average Time To Read |
| 1 | Vmoto Super Soco CPX (scooter) | 2,834 | 11 minutes |
| 2 | Honda NSC 110 Vision (scooter) | 12,146 | 51 minutes |
| 3 | Honda CB125F (motocyclette) | 15,029 | 1 hour 3 minutes |
| 4 | Range Rover Evoque | 16,526 | 1 hour 9 minutes |
| 5 | Honda PCX125 (scooter) | 21,083 | 1 hour 28 minutes |
| 6 | Nissan Leaf | 21,541 | 1 hour 30 minutes |
| 7 | Yamaha NMAX 125 (scooter) | 22,152 | 1 hour 33 minutes |
| 8 | Honda SHi 125 (scooter) | 23,438 | 1 hour 38 minutes |
| 9 | Yamaha Ténéré 700 (motocross) | 28,685 | 2 hours |
| 10 | VW Polo | 31,897 | 2 hours 14 minutes |
The 10 vehicle manuals which are the most difficult to read
In addition to reading-length, the Scrap Car Comparison study also used the renowned Flesch-Kincaid Reading Ease Score to rank the how accessible each of these popular vehicle manuals are.
Finding that the manual of the McLaren 765LT supercar is the most difficult to digest, with a score of 44.3, you would need the equivalent of a college-leveleducation to understand the text. The Vauxhall Crossland X, BMW 2 Series, Ferrari 812 Superfast and Vauxhall Grandland X follow to make up the top five most difficult manuals to read.
The 10 vehicle manuals which are the easiest to read
It was the Model Y from automotive and technology giant Tesla which ranked as the easiest vehicle manual to understand. Scoring 76.92 on the Flesch Reading Ease Score, the manual for the EV is suitable for those in 7th grade (aged 12-13 years old) to read, and is no more complex than Twilight or The Great Gatsby to grasp.
Methodology and comparison
Researchers from Scrap Car Comparison analysed the user manuals for 90 best-selling vehicles (including cars, trucks, motorbikes, EVs and supercars), taken from a range of seedlists, to reveal their length and readability.
The number of pages was taken from the length of each PDF document, with the word count determined using Doc Word Counter. The average time to read each manual was calculated using the total word count of the document, and the average English silent reading speed of 238 words per minute.
An excerpt of 1500-3000 words from each manual was then analysed using the Datayze Readability Analyser to determine the readability of the document based on the Flesch-Kincaid Reading Ease and Grade Level scoring systems. 16 books were also analysed in the same way, in order to allow comparisons to be drawn.
| Book | Word Count | Average Time to Read |
| War and Peace | 587,287 | 41 hours 8 minutes |
| Entire Lord of the Rings series (including The Hobbit) | 576,459 | 40 hours 22 minutes |
| A Game of Thrones | 298,000 | 20 hours 52 minutes |
| The Da Vinci Code | 137,540 | 9 hours 37 minutes |
| Moby Dick | 94,500 | 6 hours 37 minutes |
| Pride and Prejudice | 83,421 | 5 hours 50 minutes |
| Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone | 76,944 | 5 hours 23 minutes |
| Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets | 85,141 | 5 hours 57 minutes |
| The Great Gatsby | 59,800 | 4 hours 11 minutes |
All data is correct as of February 2022. Click here for the complete results from Scrap Car Comparison.
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