PurposeThis study conducts a comparative study on the performance of reliability assessment methods based on adaptive surrogate models to accurately assess the reliability of automobile components, which is critical to the safe operation of vehicles.Design/methodology/approachIn this study, different adaptive learning strategies and surrogate models are combined to study their performance in reliability assessment of automobile components.FindingsBy comparing the reliability evaluation problems of four automobile components, the Kriging model and Polynomial Chaos-Kriging (PCK) have better robustness. Considering the trade-off between accuracy and efficiency, PCK is optimal. The Constrained Min-Max (CMM) learning function only depends on sample information, so it is suitable for most surrogate models. In the four calculation examples, the performance of the combination of CMM and PCK is relatively good. Thus, it is recommended for reliability evaluation problems of automobile components.Originality/valueAlthough a lot of research has been conducted on adaptive surrogate-model-based reliability evaluation method, there are still relatively few studies on the comprehensive application of this method to the reliability evaluation of automobile component. In this study, different adaptive learning strategies and surrogate models are combined to study their performance in reliability assessment of automobile components. Specially, a superior surrogate-model-based reliability evaluation method combination is illustrated in this study, which is instructive for adaptive surrogate-model-based reliability analysis in the reliability evaluation problem of automobile components.