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Consumer Reports No Longer Recommends the Tesla Model 3 (cnn.com)
Consumer Reports is pulling its recommendation of the Tesla Model 3, citing reliability issues with the car. "Tesla buyers are more likely to be satisfied with their car than customers of any other brand, according to Consumer Reports," reports CNN. "Yet the publication says many customers reported problems with the Model 3, including loose body trim and glass defects." From the report: "Consumers expect their cars to last -- and not be in the repair shop. That's why reliability is so important," said Jake Fisher, senior director of automotive testing at Consumer Reports.
Tesla pointed to its overall customer satisfaction rating from Consumer Reports and said it has corrected many of the problems found in the survey.
"We take feedback from our customers very seriously and quickly implement improvements any time we hear about issues," said the company statement. It said the survey was conducted from July through September, "so the vast majority of these issues have already been corrected through design and manufacturing improvements, and we are already seeing a significant improvement in our field data." Last May, the product testing website failed to give the Model 3 a recommendation due to issues with braking, but ultimately reversed its decision after Tesla released a firmware update improving the car's breaking distance by nearly 20 feet.
I design and have engineers and programmers develop for me and mass manufacturing reliable systems is really hard. The 80:20 rule means there will always be an issue you don't pick up in pilot runs. The other car manufacturers have had decades refining designs and production systems. I'm actually surprised Tesla have had few problems as they have had.
but.. providing they survive, they will learn just like all the other car companies have, and fix their quality issues... it's a balancing act between capital expenditure (in tooling, engineering, prototyping, testing) and profitability.
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We own a BMW 3 series. It has about 101K miles on it and the starter is going out (intermittently doesn't even try to crank the car). It took BMW 2 weeks to properly diagnose the issue. Then, they wanted $1246 to replace the starter!
Turns out, that is actually sickeningly reasonable on this vehicle that seems to be expressly designed to be a maintenance nightmare. Replacing the starter requires removing an obscene number of components INCLUDING the freakin' intake manifold!!!! Even then, the primary bolt faces the rear and is tucked up behind the firewall. Getting a socket onto it requires a ridiculous assembly of u-joints and extensions.
Most starters on this series go out in the 100K mile range, so this is expected maintenance in an age where cars routinely go 200K+ miles.
These cars are so unreliable, in general, that I've even read reports of owners who claim they have no problems but include insanity like replacing the water pump every 30K miles in their maintenance schedules in order to achieve that "no problems" mark.
As the BMW 3 series is the main competitor of the Model 3, Tesla really has a very low bar to achieve reliability leadership in its class. I doubt any of their real performance equal competitors are matching their reliability.
I fear long term, support will be poor and parts hard or impossible to get. I have heard several reports or refusal to sell parts to unverified persons or people with blocked VINs, (the vehicle was salvage). They are also very technology driven, which in the past has shown does not age well. Hey look at my Tesla with a 10 year old LCD screen! Give me a knob to turn or button to press. Nothing worse then touch screens.
Since the beginning of Tesla experienced transportation people have observed that it has always been possible to carefully build premium automobiles (and buggies, and chariots, and oxcarts) and sell them at low volume for a premium price at a decent profit to the founders. The difficulty comes when the seller fills its premium market and tries to expand to volume. Daimler-Benz and Cadillac managed to do that successfully; 10,000 competitors from 1895 forward did not. And Tesla? Still to be seen.
Do people actually follow the Consumer Reports recommendations? Just curious.
Personally, the one thing I liked about CR was the "Consumerist" blog their subsidiary ran, but after they unceremoniously closed it down nothing else about CR seems of value. Hence the curiosity, does the public take them into account in buying something like a car?
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
To people who didn't know better, they'd think that you actually have a Model 3. You don't - you're a consistent Tesla foe on this forum. You're just repeating FUD that you heard.
Going down the list:
1) There were two cases (out of hundreds of thousands of cars) of the bumper coming off. It wasn't due to being "in the rain", but rather driving quickly through standing water (the bumper was acting like a parachute, and Model 3 has crazy amounts of torque). These cases were half a year ago. No new cases have been reported since.
2) According to the Model 3 Owners Survey, conducted last August (when autowipers were brand new; they've gotten better since then), the ratings for autowipers were:
57,0%: They do their job just fine
25,5%: Very rarely don't wipe, or wipe too often - but it's not a problem
9,7%: Minor issues that probably should be fixed.
7,8%: Moderate to major issues
These are similar numbers to what you'd find for a review of any autowiper system - and this was the very first release.
3) You can make the water go into the trunk by applying RainX to your rear windshield, which makes the water slide off faster and over the rear gutter. But there is a rear gutter (it was enlarged last year regardless).
4) According to the Model 3 Owners Survey (again, last August, involving a lot of early vehicles) 76,5% were "very satisfied" with their exterior fit and finish, and 16,9% "mostly satisfied" (93,4% total). For interior fit and finish, the numbers were 80,2% and 17,0%, respectively (97,2%). Infotainment system satisfaction ("the screen") were 58,2% and 31,3%, respectively (89,5%). These are exceedingly high numbers.
And these exceedingly high numbers show. Since we're talking about Consumer Reports, wouldn't it be great if they had polled what people thought of their cars? Why, they did! And of all of the different models from all of the different manufacturers, Model 3 owners loved their cars the most. 92% satisfaction. Specifically, the question they were asked about was whether, after having owned the car, they would make the same purchase decision again. So IMHO it's rather odd for Consumer Reports to recommend against a car that their own survey found brought their owners the most joy, and ALSO got the lowest VSS (combined probability of injury score) in NHTSA history.
I do have two issues with CR's methodology, which I'll mention here.,
1) They're giving the impression that we're talking about recent Model 3s here. This is not true. This data was collected on Model 3s from early last year to the middle of last year. These are early-run vehicles that they're talking about. For example, they mentioned the "phantom click" issue. That only existed on some vehicles delivered from February to April 2018 in the 4000-15000 VIN range, due to a bad batch of displays from a supplier. The problem has not existed at all in any form for nearly a year. Yet it's something that CR cites. Note how low those VINs are; Tesla's VINs are now nearly 300k.
2) Specifically because of all of the anti-Tesla FUD, most Model 3 buyers went over their vehicles with a fine-toothed comb, in a way that buyers of other vehicles do not. There were even long "checklists" circulating around that many people used to make sure that their vehicles were flawless at delivery. Who does that for any other vehicle? Now, there's nothing wrong at all with doing this - diligence is great when buying a car. But it messes with self-reporting surveys like CR's. The more a person searches for any little issue
When was the last time you ran anywhere? I mean with your own legs, not by pressing 'X'?
Also, for serious EV news that apparently has flown entirely under the radar for most people today...
Der Zellkonflikt mit den Zulieferern
Short summary: VW wants to emulate Tesla and build Gigafactories (in conjunction with SK Innovation, which would be playing the role that Panasonic does with Tesla). However, they're being held hostage by their current supplier (LG), who is threatening to cut off all battery shipments to them (immediately) unless they drop their Gigafactory plans. VW is trying to find a way out of this mess, as they see the Gigafactory approach as being essential to ensuring a sufficient supply of cells at a low enough price to meet their target price points and be competitive.
When was the last time you ran anywhere? I mean with your own legs, not by pressing 'X'?