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Consumer Reports Expects Tesla's Model 3 To Have 'Average Reliability' (cnbc.com)
There may be only a few hundred Tesla Model 3s on the street, but Consumer Reports already has an opinion on the new car's dependability. From a report: "We are predicting that the Model 3 should have about average reliability," said Jake Fisher, director of auto testing for Consumer Reports. Average may irritate Tesla fans and the nearly 500,000 people who have reserved a Model 3, but Fisher believes people should understand what Consumer Reports expects from the new car. "We don't go around recommending that people buy cars that are below average, so if it is average or better, that is not a bad thing at all," said Fisher. "But let's be very clear, we are not giving it super high marks. We are saying it is basically par for the course." Consumer Reports has yet to buy a Model 3 and put it through a battery of tests, as the magazine does for dozens of vehicles. In addition, so few Model 3 cars have been delivered that Fisher and his team have yet to get a sense of how owners feel about their new Tesla.
Consumer Reports stakes their reputation on their reviews being above reproach on an ethical basis. They don't accept freebies from manufacturers. They don't use affiliate links. They don't accept sponsorships. Instead, they buy all of their products from the same stock that any other consumer would (rather than the hand-picked ones that oftentimes get sent to reviewers) and they make their revenue by charging people a fee to have access to their content. Sadly, in the Internet era, that business model has pushed them towards clickbait headlines designed to increase their membership, as evidenced by their very public-yet-baseless jabs over the last few years at whichever companies are popular (e.g. Apple, Tesla, etc.).
This is yet another of those jabs designed to drum up revenue. They don't even have a Model 3 in their hands yet, so when they say, "let's be very clear, we are not giving it super high marks", what they're actually saying is, "we have nothing meaningful to say at this moment, and we expect that the actual review we post won't make headlines, so instead we'll say something outlandish about the popular product now in the hopes that some suckers will sign up to read our final review". They're certainly not faithfully performing their duty to review things in an impartial manner based solely on the facts. Rather, they're sacrificing their integrity for the sake of a quick buck, as has sadly become par for the course with them.
Whatever reputation they still had in the circles I move in died years ago.