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Consumer Reports: Tesla's Model X Is 'Fast and Flawed' (marketwatch.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from MarketWatch: Tesla Motors Inc. was dealt a blow earlier this week as Consumer Reports magazine called the Model X, its much-awaited and much-feted SUV, a "flawed" vehicle. Beyond a "brag-worthy magic, the all-wheel drive Model X 90D largely disappoints," the magazine said, citing rear doors prone to pausing and stopping, second-row seats that can't be folded, and limiting cargo capacity. Even its panoramic, helicopter-like windshield won cranky-sounding disapproval from Consumer Reports: It's not tinted enough to offset the brightness of a sunny day, it said. Overall "the ride is too firm and choppy for a $110,000 car," Consumer Reports said. Earlier this year, Consumer Reports released its 2016 Car Reliability Survey and found that, while the Tesla Model S has become more reliable, the Tesla Model X has proved to be unreliable overall.
I know nerds obsess over them, but Tesla builds shitty cars. Trim falling off, panel gap issues... as someone who purchases cars around $100k, these are just unacceptable. The Model S is fast but handles like a pig. It's not fun to drive unless you like stop light racing teens. Nor are they luxurious compared to a similarly priced Merc or Audi...
You can nitpick his language, but he has a point - Consumer Reports "reliability" ratings blow. They count every problem equally - a power window going on the fritz has the same weight as the transmission falling out the bottom. Add to this that they do not consider the cost of the repair - a Chevy might have an alternator that is less reliable than a Honda, but also costs half as much to replace. Nowhere is that reflected in the rankings. When I'm buying a car I want to know what the total cost of ownership is, how likely it is to leave me stranded, and how much it will cost me to fix in the event that it breaks down - it does not answer any of those questions.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Every. Fucking. Day. Musk Tesla musk Tesla.
If you want to read about Kim Kardashian instead, there are plenty of other sites. But this site is for nerds, and Elon is the king of the nerds. He is building electric cars, solar panels, rockets, and trying to put people on Mars. He co-founded an institute to open source AI. He is like a real life Tony Stark. All the boy nerds want to be him. All the girl nerds want to sleep with him, and still would even if he only had one billion.
I'm a hyper intelligent shade of blue and I would woohvool him as well.
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Jesus Christ... I guess Steve Jobs' corpse's cock decayed away too much for you to suck it anymore, so you started on Musk's?
Musk got rich being a middleman for online beanie baby auctions, and would be nosediving toward bankruptcy right now if it weren't for government subsidies. He doesn't "invent" shit, he steals old ideas and throws money at engineers to make them happen (and still more money at marketers to give his whole empire a trendy, luxury veneer. A ripoff of Jobs and Apple, I suppose). He talks about going to Mars using a ship he sketched on the back of a napkin at lunch, completely ignoring that the whole project is profoundly expensive and unprofitable and would never get off the drawing board (or napkin, as the case may be) unless President Trump woke up one day and decided to write him a $50 billion check.
Musk's cult of personality - and the worship of tech "visionaries" in general - is just fucking pathetic. On the other hand, billionaire worship is probably the most capitalist, American thing I can think of, so there's that I guess.
For things that are measured, they at least try. For handling, they should refer people to a review from a respectable auto-industry mag. They don't have the rght people to know what's "good". I want to see them review a lamborghini. "Horrible seating position, unsafe reversing visibility, stiff ride, poor mileage." Well, obviously, it's a Lambo.
They are helpful if they reviewed one of the thing you wanted, and then you compare it with others to consider. For something nobody has an opinion on, like refrigerators or clothes dryers.
Learn to love Alaska
They'd be right. I was in a Ferrari Testarossa and it was awful. You'd have orthapedic problems just sitting in the seat if you were over 5'10. Getting in an out is impossible. Visibility sucks. The ride is harsh on anything but good asphalt. The interior features are minimal and flimsy.
I think the more recent supercars are all teched up with creature comforts, though.
"Musk's cult of personality - and the worship of tech "visionaries" in general - is just fucking pathetic"
Have you seen who's going to be handed control of the US Military in 2 months time?
I'll take Musk over Trump any fucking weekday and twice on weekends.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
(Score:5, Funny)
I came here to say just that, but noooooooooooo ....
You only think about yourself.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
...and yet if it got a glowing review it would be proof positive that Consumer Reports nailed it and has a great reputation for not accepting bribes, etc. Face it, it's just that they trashed your favorite car and now you have to reply by trashing CR.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
CR's function is pretty simple - make sure Joe Average Consumer doesn't get ripped off. They aren't about highly detailed reviews, those are for hobbyist magazines dedicated to each market. CR is about finding a model of practically any sort of product that is "good enough" and not fatally flawed. That's it. If you expect more of them, then you aren't using them right.
OK, I don't post here much but read almost every day. I thought I would bite on this one, enough to change my password that I did not remember.
I don't know what is wrong with Consumer reports (I am a member), but after reading this post, I sat here wondering "hmm, when was the last time I was able to do something useful with one of their reviews?". I can't remember. I joined originally to compare appliances for my house, not sure what an alternative for that would be. For cars, I think you spend more time trying to interpret what their reviews "mean" than actually being able to use it in a purchasing decision, unless it is clear-cut and uncontested. Closest you will get to a car they consistently love, Lexus maybe? (what I was going to get if I did not go Tesla). But that is really boring if there is nothing they don't like about it.
They really liked the Model S at first, then they (now they) say it is unreliable. Based on that, I am not completely surprised about what they are saying about the Model X. I almost bought one, but my use case is better for a sedan and the doors scare me. Even Elon said he went overboard with the doors, just because you CAN do something, doesn't mean you SHOULD. Aside from that, I would prefer to let a model X owner chime in and offer their side of it. Or check the forums and ask.
I have owned a Tesla Model S 60D (fully loaded) for about 3 months now. Not sure what to actually say here that won't get me flamed, so I will just try to offer some helpful first-hand insight.
TL:DR - I have a Tesla and I am a regular guy, ask away.
For example, I am a little bothered by this negative post from the "Tesla builds shitty cars" guy, so I will pick that:
quote:
I know nerds obsess over them, but Tesla builds shitty cars. Trim falling off, panel gap issues... as someone who purchases cars around $100k, these are just unacceptable. The Model S is fast but handles like a pig. It's not fun to drive unless you like stop light racing teens. Nor are they luxurious compared to a similarly priced Merc or Audi...
My comments:
- The only thing in the paragraph that is even partially true might be the last statement. I have been in / owned cheaper cars that had better interior or features that I miss or wish my Tesla had / got right. Is it that bad? No, but people expect a car THAT expensive to perfect. I have sat in even more expensive cars, that also have this problem. I think it is more of a problem of expectations than any actual deterrent to buying or owning the car.
- There are people who have had problems with Tesla cars, lots of them. Maybe some of them think they are shitty as a result. I know I had trouble with this when I was researching if I should buy one or not (1-2 months of research I would say, two test drives, 5 or so trips to dealer) mostly because I had to filter through them for some real information. And to be fair, I have had it for only 3 months. Ask me again in 1-2 years or longer. I am asking myself all the time - would I dare to keep this car past the 8-year warranty?
- Fast but handles like a pig? It weighs 5,000+ lbs: so, you would expect that it would not accelerate well and would be too heavy to stay on the road because of things like that pesky F = ma. I could write pages on this, I am an engineer, but this is not a problem. Not only does it not have this problem, but it even exceeds the performance of much lighter cars that really SHOULD handily beat it. If you research why this is, it is because it is one of the things they got right, the short version is put all the weight at the bottom. I think the biggest limitation is actually the limit of my driving skills. I don't even own a "P" (performance) model, those one's that go 0-60 in 2.5/3.0 seconds or so (Yes, I did test drive it). Mine is a regular all-wheel drive with the smallest battery they currently sell. My 0-60 is 5.2 seconds. God bless those people who buy those $110K+, or the $150+ P100D, for me that would be at least $20-$
Regular doors work just as well, or even sliding ones. They're cheaper, simpler and more reliable. It should be a no brainer. Of course that assumes the gull wing doors were added to solve a practical problem. The reality is they were probably added to solve a marketing problem - a justification to jack the price up and free press.
In a hatchback, you put hinges on the rear seats so they fold forward. Folding seats were innovative 1914, over a hundred years ago, and they aren't any different just whether the engine is a flat 4, a V8, or electric. Tesla literally could have used the exact same seats from any 1970s station wagon.
They're a hundred years behind in basic utility features and "innovation" isn't an excuse.
I think quite a few luxury SUV manufacturers might have an issue with that statement...
"Tesla cars have a much larger cargo capacity than any other $110,000 car"
Three bags of groceries?
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
Add to this that they do not consider the cost of the repair - a Chevy might have an alternator that is less reliable than a Honda, but also costs half as much to replace.
The problem is, the Chevy will probably break in 4-6 years but the Honda part will last for 20.
Also any calculation will only involve OEM parts, whilst Genuine Honda parts are extremely expensive, anyone with an ounce of intelligence will just by the same part from Bosch or whoever makes it avoiding the OEM tax. Add to that the fact you can get cheaper 3rd party parts for a Honda.
I've had Japanese and European cars, My parents owned Holdens (Chevy in Australia). The Japanese cars was the cheapest to repair, my Euro the most expensive... but both didn't break nearly as much as the Holdens, they didn't cost a bomb to fix like my BMW, but they needed to be fixed more often. As the old joke goes, 97% of Chevys are still on the road... only 3% made it home.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
God only knows what motivates the far Right. I think many of them don't like renewables and therefore dislike Solar City. And in that specific case, they may have a valid point. The SC operation seems kind of shady to me. SC gets the money. The homeowner gets probably expensive electricity and all the risk.
Why they dislike Tesla, Space-X, and the battery factory escapes me. Private businesses competing with other private businesses. In the case of Space-X, purportedly doing a better job than NASA. What's not to like unless they like me think Musk is ... ahem ... less than honest ... at times in his claims? It's not like those folks can possibly have functioning BS filters.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
I gotta second this!
Last summer I was shopping for a Minivan. Consumer Reports gave the Toyota a better score than the Kia. I dug into that. Turns out the Toyota automatically brakes when it detects an eminent collision. The Kia just warns you. No mention anywhere of all Toyota's problems with unintended acceleration, their widely documented software faults, etc. No mention of Kia's surround-cameras that make parallel parking a breeze. (Real killer app that. Check it on youtube. It's even better in person!)
About a week after I bought the Kia the eminent collision alarm sounded. Rainy day. Winding twisting road. Up and down hills. You know, the sort where speed limits are strictly enforced by natural selection... I was going around a curve, another fellow was going the other way, just perfectly timed to trip the alarm. No danger, we were each safely in our own lanes. But if the Kia had auto-brakes... Well with all the electronic stability stuff, I might have avoided skidding out during a hard brake. But I'm pretty sure the guy behind me in a rusted out '68 chevy would have plowed through me and pushed into oncoming traffic.
I came that close to being a traffic statistic! Thanks for nothing CR.
And geeze, CR will compare Google Docs to Microsoft Office, but they won't even mention LibreOffice. Yeah. That seems balanced...
All of what you say might or might not be true, but none of it is captured in the Consumer Reports data. I personally have found my Japanese cars to be more reliable, but also more expensive to fix. My shittiest car was a Chevy Blazer, and I replaced the transmission 3 times... but at the end of the day I had the car for well over 150k+ miles (the speedometer stopped working...) and each transmission rebuild cost only $600 dollars. I'm in a different phase of life now and appreciate the reliability more than the ease of repair, but it would still be good information to have. My latest fix on my Toyota involved a simple radiator swap and the entire AC unit had to be removed for access. This made a quick and cheap repair quite expensive.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Yes... Tesla's original awesomeness was like that of a talking horse, who amazes by the mere fact of talking. That it talks with a heavy accent and has a very limited vocabulary does not diminish the awe. Initially.
But then, slowly, it gets treated like any other talker, and the audience begins noticing the flaws. Tesla is entering this stage now.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Three bags of groceries?
(Ob 4 Yorkshiremen) "Luxury!" When Road & Track reviewed the Lotus Europa, they wrote that the front trunk had enough room to hold a few handkerchiefs and a small amount of sand.
A dingo ate my sig...
If CR is basing its Tesla ratings on owner surveys then they're getting very different results than all the other ratings agencies. I'd wonder if the other ones are bought off except that all my friends who have Teslas cannot shut up about how perfect they are, without exception.
I think it's more likely that the Press reminds people that CR still exists when they get their hate on for Tesla and the people at CR can find narrow excuses to justify their complaints while massively benefitting from the exposure.
Being bought off and benefiting financially from a review are not the same thing but both can apply bias pressures.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
All the news I see about Tesla is bad news. Elon has assured me that it is all fake!
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Well personally I'm glad about that. Not that I would ever buy a Tesla but I would sure want to know if I was paying that much for a car that didn't even have the power windows right. That screams safety hazard right there. If they can't do that, how would you expect them to make a car with a frame that can hold all that torque for the lifetime of a car.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Jesus Christ... I guess Steve Jobs' corpse's cock decayed away too much for you to suck it anymore, so you started on Musk's?
Not at all. Most of us here would happily have a threesome. Alas one of the world changing parties is no longer with us.
I retrofitted the doors on my Hyundai Genesis Coupe to open "lambo style", similar to this, some years ago.
In theory, there are some practical advantages to the design, including ability to get in and out when you're parked in a tight space. (Many times in parking garages, I've found they painted the lines so narrowly spaced to maximize capacity that you can't get in or out without your door touching the car next to you. Vertical "scissor" or "lambo" doors would solve this problem.)
In reality though? I found that it's definitely an engineering challenge that requires a lot more care and expense in the design to do it "right". Even with the kit I used, which was supposedly "best in class", I found the metal hinges used weren't made of a thick enough steel to avoid a lot of flexing. (Once you have a door open, up in the air -- it acts like a big lever when wind blows against it.) And the shocks that help hold the door up and make it easy to open and close are subject to wear over time. After a year or two, it's likely it won't hold a door up at the exact same height as the door on the other side of the car. There were also finicky adjustments that had to be made so the door closed just right when it was pulled closed. Generally, they'd get out of adjustment and need tweaking every 6 months or so.
I can see how all of this could be addressed better in a car designed to use them from the start, vs. a retrofit. But the experience convinced me that you're going to pay a big premium for doors that open this way, and it's likely to be more of a maintenance issue than standard doors and hinges.
They've been critically flawed for longer than that.
I will never forgive them for nearly killing the digital speedometer. They gave a bad review to every car that had one, to the point that it became almost impossible to find a car with one for years.
I drive a plug-in hybrid. Literally nothing else on the dash is analog, the rest of it is LCD panels, but it still has an analog speedo. I've got a GPS that I use just so I know how fast I'm going without having to translate dial to number. If the Chevy Volt hadn't been $5k more with significantly less interior space I'd have bought it instead just for the digital speedo.
Not to mention that annoying train whistle in the middle of the night.
. . . I heard they leak oil and loose their compression . . .
The trunk of my 1984 Volkswagen Jetta could carry two old vacuum tube mainframe Tektronix oscilloscopes. With room to spare. That was a trunk.
My latest fix on my Toyota involved a simple radiator swap and the entire AC unit had to be removed for access. This made a quick and cheap repair quite expensive.
The starter motor in my BM required the engine to be lifted. Replacing that cost 90 quid in parts, but 190 quid in labour (3.5 hours at 60 pounds an hour). Cars sometimes have these little surprises.
I'm also not looking forward to replacing the roof motor (its not dead yet, but its going). The part is 300 quid but 400 quid for labour as it's a 2 man job. I'm thinking that I'll try to DYI that one.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Well, if they can't figure out a way to aggregate and present data from their thousands of survey respondents in such a way, they will continue to be useless to me. I'm not sure why they can't aggregate repair information - they already do it for maintenance costs. I suppose it would still be useful for people who trade in their car every 5 years.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
I don't know anything about Tesla's power windows - that was just an example. My point is that your stereo going on the blink is a much less serious problem than being stranded on the side of the road with a mechanical failure. I personally weigh the mechanical failure much more highly than the stereo, so a magazine without this shared value is just a notch above useless.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
I waited for years for the Model X. I drive the only SUV Hybrid (Ford Escape Hybrid -- no longer made) because I want the greenest car that can go off-road. I go off road for about 1% of my driving but I am a member of the 5% of SUV owners that do go off road.
I thought the Model X would be its replacement. No way as it turned out. No roof-rack -- not even as a custom mod -- so it can't carry a canoe or a kayak or whatever. On top of that the carriage just wouldn't make it on some of the roads I drive.
They shouldn't be allowed to call it an SUV. It is a mini-van. For soccer-moms and the like that's just great, but nobody serious into sports.
That they are right is irrelevant. You don't send a vegetarian to review a BBQ joint. You don't send a lactose intolerant person to review an Italian restaurant. And you don't send CR to review a "fun" car.
And getting out isn't impossible, it just requires lessons. The same lessons I learned on an '84 Corvette, I applied to the more modern super-cars (and race cars with a full-cage). But that's all irrelevant to the point that people buy a Ferrari for one of two reasons: To look like a rich jack-hole, or to go fast, neither or which are measured by CR, so CR will *always* miss the point. When some of the most desired cars on the planet are (or would be) rated poorly by CR, it seems that CR would be wrong, not reality.
Learn to love Alaska
I agree with your message but this line caught my eye
Add to this that they do not consider the cost of the repair - a Chevy might have an alternator that is less reliable than a Honda, but also costs half as much to replace.
I don't care how cheap it is to fix something if I am left stranded on a dark highway on a stormy night in the middle of nowhere. THAT is the point of reliability. Not that something is cheap to fix. The cost of failure is greater than merely the cost of repairs.
"Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
I'd just like the data so that I can make my own decision. At one point in my life, my time was pretty worthless (monetarily speaking) and swapping out parts on my cheap, old Chevy with 150k+ was well worth the occasional tow. Now I would have zero patience for that crap.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
They count every problem equally
Completely wrong. First, the reliability ratings are broken down by category in the actual CR reports, even if news summaries for idiots condense them into "CU says not reliable". Yes, CR does provide an overall "predicted reliability", but anyone with an ounce of sense who cares about the distinction will look at the breakdown. Second, from their FAQ:
Problems with the engine-major, cooling system, transmission-major, and driveline are more likely to take a car out of service and to be more expensive to repair than the other problem areas. Consequently, we weigh these areas more heavily in our calculations of Used Car Verdicts and Predicted Reliability. Problems such as broken trim and in-car electronics have a much smaller weight. Problems in any area can be an expense and a bother, though, so we report them all in the Reliability History charts.
Thanks for the clarification. This was not always the case, and so I haven't bothered with their automotive recommendations for a long time. Maybe I'll give it a fresh look. I'd still like to see a repair cost metric figured into the ratings - that $1000 extended warranty is usually a rip-off, but if you are a BMW owner and need a $7500 transmission, you'll wish you had it.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Trump can't be president unless he sells off all of his businesses and cuts all ties with foreign powers. Both of those cases violate the constitution.
Trump doesn't care about the rules
Pain is merely failure leaving the body