Tesla, electric SUVs get poor scores from Consumer Reports
reuters.com
reuters.com
In that time I've dealt with:
Several "opportunities" to go "full self driving". This specific vehicle is running up on a decade, there is no way it'll materialize for this car.
Weird sensor bugs - doors refusing to open, or more scary, opening while driving.
Center console and driver gauges crashing - screens locking up and going blank and service tells me, 'try deleting some of your navigation history?'
Updates sometimes failing, leaving the car sending notices that it's trying to update and can't, over and over.
Windows that don't seal, or seal too high (making it difficult to open the door).
Being told the built in 3G modem will have to be scrapped and replaced at my expense, requiring a whole new entertainment unit (including a new screen).
Worse battery life than expected, despite being a cautious driver who babies that battery pack.
Odd software bugs - it regularly double sends garage door commands, thinks the wrong key is in the vehicle (resetting the drivers seat to the wrong profile), fails to make and maintain Bluetooth, makes bad navigation assumptions (no, I'm not trying to drive to Prague from Seattle), back up camera locking up/freezing/delayed.
Tons of fit and finish issues.
When I first had the car, I was treated like royalty by their service team. These days they often brush aside concerns ("there's a recall for my vehicle", "oh? Yes. We'll contact you when we can service it." Months pass. "I never heard from you, is my vehicle still recalled?" "Yes, but you didn't schedule service. You should have scheduled.")
Supercharger network is great... When you can use it. I've had several instances where the hardware didn't work, the speeds weren't correct, or people were idling with full batteries, blocking my use.
So, all in all, I love this car and I hate this car, and it's just obnoxious and frustrating enough to warrant looking elsewhere. The things that make Tesla unique are fading as other manufacturers catch up, and frankly, I trust those other manufacturers to assemble a better car.
When the driver opens their door, the driver's seat starts moving backward.
If you are sitting behind the driver, and have longer-than-average legs, this means your legs are now getting actively crushed by a motor.
If it's your first time in a Tesla, you are probably now panicking trying to figure out how to open the damn door, which inexplicably operates differently than every other car door in existence.
Not a pleasant experience. I've now learned to quickly and loudly remind the driver not to exit until I do when in this situation.
The seats in my 6 year old winter beater BMW will stop moving if they encounter resistance.
It's a two-door car so the seats move often too to accommodate my dog traveling in the back seats, I'd consider it a basic safety feature.
Edit: Just tested it again, the moment it encounters resistance it reverses direction for a second then stops
The amount of force it took is fairly low too, yet I've never had this failsafe accidentally trigger.
You'd think this stuff is table stakes for a mechanically advantaged system that can move hundreds of pounds effortlessly.
In the case of automatic car windows everything from ambient temps to battery voltage is used to detect if there's an obstacle present.
And I think what makes it kind of unacceptable is you can get off the shelf modules that integrate anti-pinch features:
https://www.continental-automotive.com/en-gl/Passenger-Cars/...
It wreaks of NIH syndrome or just trying to shave off some cost.
A quick search shows Teslas even have rear seat occupancy sensors, so that alone should disable the movement if there's a person detected in the back.
Most cars it's just a toggle. In Teslas you have to setup a new profile and manually set the steering wheel and seat to the exit position. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94l43ILKRsA
A few months later I had learned how to reboot the drivers side door latch because of a software failure, somewhere… and I thought “oh yeah, right. It’s like they hooked a computer to a car.”
I am curious how much Tesla fans are impressed by Tesla-specific qualities of their vehicles vs, say, the exhilaration of driving an electric car. For many, Tesla was the first EV they have ever driven. I can understand thinking that your car is superior after associating it with the EV experience. For what it's worth, I don't own a Tesla, but I do drive an EV and it is the best vehicle I've ever driven.
This is exactly why I don't like to buy devices that are coupled to unnecessary electronic components or batteries. For instance, a high-end speaker or headphone can last decades. Make it connected and battery powered, it'll be in a landfill within a couple of years. Environmental disasters in the making.
https://www.audiusa.com/us/web/en/inside-audi/innovation/aud...
It could maybe be done by replacing the antenna with some kind of direct output that emulated a 3G tower perhaps, big job though.
I guess that's what happens when you have an entirely "software defined" car --- software bugs, because they're more common than hardware ones, can cause far more problems. Do Teslas have the two-stage latch that I thought was a mandatory safety feature?
Spoiler alert: the normal door handles don't open the doors.
Plot twist: the back doors have a completely different (and concealed) opening mechanism than the front doors.
Surprise ending: you have to teach the backseat people how to unlatch their doors, after you just trial-and-errored your way out the front door(s).
Can you elaborate on this? To me, this is 90% of importance of owning an electric car. If the range is significantly worse than expected, then the customer is being taken advantage of, since that's where most of the manufacturing cost lies.
Range anxiety is, in my opinion, the #1 issue with EVs right now. It will be helped by bigger batteries and more convenient charging.
> people were idling with full batteries, blocking my use
How? If you’re at full and the Supercharger is at high capacity they start paying idle fees. I mean I guess someone can sit there for no reason but that’s a surprising story to me.
...also known as fixes for stuff that should've been caught before you were sold it. The whole "update culture" that has permeated into everything is a horrible abomination. It justifies leaving flaws unfixed before release, under the premise that "we can always fix it later", and indeed that's what appears to have happened --- except, in a lot of cases, it never gets fixed.
Because the idle fee is less than some parking garages cost? Or less than the convenience cost of moving the car?
It's only 50c/minute if the supercharger is not fully occupied when you park.
If you're in some of the bigger cities, you can easily be approaching $30/hr for prime parking. And the idle fee is only for the period in excess of the active charging.
Tesla also just massively increased charging prices: https://carbuzz.com/news/tesla-supercharging-costs-have-quad...
Having previously worked in safety critical spaces in aerospace and automotive, this lackadaisical attitude to QC is a bit foreign to me.
https://nitter.net/omacs/status/1459593051538481153
I think the recommendation is to take a pages long checklist with you when taking delivery.
A lot of companies are having problems with the chip shortage and they have to make some tradeoffs like this. At least Tesla is fixing it post delivery. Others are just removing key features, for example BMW is removing touch screens from many of their cars and as far as I know there's no retrofit program to add it back. Tesla's biggest issue with this stuff is the lack of communication ahead of time.
Among electric SUVs, Fisher said Ford Motor Co's Mustang Mach-E "is the only one with above-average reliability.'"
It's interesting to me that till recently, Fords stock price was $5/6 - last time I checked, Ford still produced the most popular trucks in the world by a long shot?
Telsa is valued as a 'tech company', and so has magic unlimited upside unicorns attached to its stock. Rivian too.
Ford doesn't have a funny meme man/CEO on Twitter making promises about their products to millions of retail investors that will never pan out. The dumb money just isn't there to drive up crazy valuations.
Ford with the F-150 Lightning and the Mach-E seems grossly undervalued and a huge buying opportunity. When rednecks find out what “instant full torque” means the Lightning will sell very well.
Tesla's current market cap only makes sense if they're producing more vehicles than every other US manufacturer, combined. That's a little more than "but not by much".
They also do that without spend on advertising. Honestly, that's pretty impressive. Is it worth more than all other auto companies combined? Will it last?
No idea.
Tesla is basically in all the high capital with low margin businesses (cars, electricity, solar, batteries).
Google up 'hold my beer'. You'll see.
The grid in rural areas suck, in general. The reliability is terrible and there may not be enough capacity for everyone to start charging their vehicles when they get home from work. Rural people also tend to drive many more miles (and sometimes much more energy intensive miles), and range can be a serious challenge. If they’re hauling, range is significantly diminished, and it’s not like you can throw a few extra batteries in the bed for when you’re out of juice. With a diesel, you can throw a 100gallon transfer tank in the bed for under $1000 and make it clear across the lower 48 without stopping (though that’s not normally what they’re for).
All that said, electric has promise. Longer vehicle lifetime and less maintenance is a huge plus.
So if you're following the law, you will end up having to stop anyway. And as charging tech improves that stop will get shorter and shorter until it's no longer a concern. And again, once people see the economics of it and see how much money is being saved, they'll gladly trade off a little bit more time waiting for charging if necessary.
> According to Edwards’ data, 75 percent of truck owners use their truck for towing one time a year or less (meaning, never). Nearly 70 percent of truck owners go off-road one time a year or less. And a full 35 percent of truck owners use their truck for hauling—putting something in the bed, its ostensible raison d’être—once a year or less.
https://www.thedrive.com/news/26907/you-dont-need-a-full-siz...
So they have some minor teething problems with body panels and such: I have a Model Y and overall it's been great, and my biggest complaint is highway noise. At speeds below perhaps 40 mph, it's far quieter than conventional cars. Preliminary data indicates the batteries last for a long time, and that long-term electric car durability is likely to be far higher than conventional cars.
Overall, the article is a reminder of the problem with rankings: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/02/14/the-order-of-t...
- Tesla will "win" the race(either to self driving, or some magical EV adoption level, or the gigapress will let them sell cars for half the price of other mfgs) and then swallow 90%+ of the market. Other auto manufacturers will just disappear or something, and will live in Tesla's shadow forever.
- Tesla makes robotaxis and everyone on the planet will simultaneously want to own a Tesla as well as pay for rides in rented Teslas. Again this argument usually rests on the assumption that Tesla will do the impossible and no other manufacturer will ever keep up.
- Tesla is a (software, navigation, power, battery, robot, mapping, AI, etc) company. They will take all of their tech an monetize it. This of course will not require any overhead and Tesla will make 110% profit on every market they enter, which, of course, they will dominate and no other existing manufacturers will be able to compete.
If you call out a Tesla fan on this, they will cycle back and forth between some variation of those arguments until you give up. Generally the Tesla fan has quite a bit invested in Tesla(via stock or just $10k beta test fees), and they argue as if conceding the argument will destroy their investment and prevent humans from colonizing Mars.
I think it's worth mentioning that Tesla doesn't just compete against other auto manufacturers. They (currently anyway) compete against public transportation systems and well designed, walkable cities. They seem to be a better solution than, say, IC cars, but in the long run we may see the world moving away from personal vehicles, electric or not. If nothing else, as cars become more intelligent, they become smaller, lighter and cheaper. Tesla may not have much advantage when we're all whizzing around in self-driving mopeds or whatever the future provides us.
What future expectations? As it is priced right now, the only way that makes sense is if Tesla starts selling more than _every other automotive manufacturer, combined_.
That's insane, and not going to happen.
"So short the stock", people say.
And then Tesla fans act like shorting TSLA is something akin to a capital crime and at the very least should be forbidden by the exchanges or the SEC, from the reactions that come from it.
It's a cheap shot that you seem to like to reiterate. What's the source you have that unions are the most problematic issue to automakers' profitability?
If every other car company has to deal with unions then its only a matter of time until they are as well. The only way they can prevent that is to pay more than the other places but then their profits wouldn't stay high.
I guess Tesla thinks they can afford a package attractive enough to compete with unions and then not needing to pay the dues will tip the scale in favor of keeping the company union free.
Then they will keep the agility they need so they can switch to things like gigapress or other labor-saving processes and lay off/reassign a bunch of workers in order to continue their relentless cost-cutting and process simplification.
Tesla values agility - of course all employers say that in order to escape unions, but Tesla is one of the few companies that is actually agile, rather than just talking about needing to be agile. It's amazing how fast they change production processes, and being union free is a big part of that.
Not sure whether this will work out for Tesla or not, since workers value stability and job security.
Both are valid goals. I'm also interested to see how Tesla will compete against the flood of cheap EVs that will be coming from China. Doug Munro is convinced that they will dominate the US market:
https://teslanorth.com/2021/11/07/china-evs-coming-for-u-s-a...
The next 10-20 years are going to be very hard on autoworkers and all the supporting industries, from parts suppliers to their suppliers, and the entire vast supporting industry which is about 5% of US employment and the single biggest component of our manufacturing sector.
It's also not clear how we can keep a defense industry in this country without auto-manufacturing.
Please learn the definition of “excess profits” before harassing me more.
Every company you mentioned is worth significantly less money than Tesla. And where does VW rank in revenue to market cap? A quick glance shows Apple makes about 80% more revenue than VW, and has a market cap 25x higher. The money isn’t going to shareholders.
Consider they are also selling solar, batteries, insurance, and likely in home robots, ride sharing, and energy trading down the line. They may also resell their tech and software down the line as well.
There is also the general over valuation of the market at work, which is not evenly distributed between companies. Too much money without enough places to go.
https://youtube.com/c/MunroLive
Their heat pumps and giga press are first of their kinds. They were things the old players said would never work and are now trying to adopt.
It's also worth pointing out that Tesla's have a lower accident rate than the national average.
I can't find anything that says other manufacturers said "heat pumps won't work".
> It's also worth pointing out that Tesla's have a lower accident rate than the national average.
What does this have to do with innovation? Many of the vehicles on the road have lower accident rates than the national average.
Tesla is also notorious for vehicle accident and safety stats being misleading, and doubly so when its around the topic of AP/FSD.
It's not that heat pumps won't work, it's about pump technology. This is actually the thermal management system, used for both heating and cooling. Sandy generally has great commentary on the auto industry. He's quite genuine
Every auto company misleads, at least Tesla is being a leader
The point about accident rates is in context of unwitting beta testers. There are many drivers on the road, many of who make the road unsafer. That fact should also be considered when discussing road safety. If FSD beta is better on average, then the roads are getting stepwise safer.
I'm sure he does (I say that sincerely). But he's also the same Sandy who was very anti-Tesla until his wife got one and he put a whole lot of his investment portfolio in TSLA stock.
> There are many drivers on the road, many of who make the road unsafer.
Many of those drivers may make poor choices, etc. But we're not touting them as role models or desired behavior. FSD is meant to be better, and is still _actively_ trying to do things that are dangerous to drivers and pedestrians.
> If FSD beta is better on average, then the roads are getting stepwise safer.
The sheer amount of stupid decisions I've seen from FSD on YouTube etc. is shocking. The only thing more stupefying is watching people actively "allowing" it to do stupid things for "views", their own inattentiveness, or for some misguided notion that they're somehow "contributing" to "training" the car.
Like pro tip: When your car has run a red light at the same intersection the last three times, don't let it do it a fourth time just "to help the project". That's irresponsible, reckless and outright dangerous.
Tesla flat out refuses to release any statistics that would actually be able to prove, or disprove, an actual fair comparison of the safety of FSD/AP. Instead we get these cherry picked miles driven where AP is touted as being safer - on the (unspoken) subset of miles where it didn't disengage because it couldn't drive or the driver decided it was safer to disengage because of the AP's driving, versus "human drivers, all miles, all conditions".
There's (relatively) few accidents for human drivers on well-painted, well-maintained roads in the California sunshine. And similar for AP/FSD.
There's a lot more accidents for human drivers on poorly painted and maintained roads in a Pittsburgh winter. And there would be for AP/FSD too, if it wasn't disengaged a large majority of that driving.
But Tesla happily lumps the sum of driving of "Human drivers in California sun and Pittsburgh winter" and says that mile-for-mile, AP/FSD is better because it had fewer accidents, even though most of those miles were accumulated in the California sun. Anyone who completed high school statistics would know this wasn't a fair comparison, but Tesla has pushed it for years.
This is slightly misleading as the average vehicle is much older and with many fewer safety features. It would be more accurate to use a comparable vehicle.
Eh? The Nissan Leaf used a heat pump since the second (2013) version. And I don't think it was the first (though it may have been the first production one).
Generally very low margin.
> batteries
Generally extremely low margin.
> insurance
Low margin
> and likely in home robots, ride sharing, and energy trading down the line.
Speculative.
The problem is that these are $60,000+ cars that don’t feel like a 60k car. You can get a Mercedes E class for that money and it feels like pure luxury when you sit inside. Every detail is just perfect.
A Tesla by comparison feels kinda cheap. Because the EV drivetrain is currently expensive and that’s what you’re paying for.
I don’t own a car but I like to rent lots of different drives. The difference in feel between a Tesla and a Merc or Beemer is stark. And not in Tesla’s favor at the moment.
The quality difference is difficult to even put into words, even against the S. The Lexus feels like a $100k car, yet costs 3/4 of that. The Tesla S feels like a $50k car, and costs more than double that. The 3 felt worse than a Corolla in every single way other than performance, but if I wanted a fast vehicle that's built like crap I'd just go buy a used sports car and at least I'd be able to get parts for it and get it serviced/repaired without it taking months.
Personally, I think Ford is able to make those changes and will be rescued if it doesn’t.
This is the least-surprising thing I've read all year. Adding a second hinge to a door is asking for trouble. Not to mention having to weather-seal a door seam on the roof.
The real risk for Tesla is probably other manufacturers catching them on range. Once you have EVs in the same price range, with roughly the same capacity Tesla starts looking like any other car with a bunch of gizmos instead of comforts.
That's particularly damning considering the cheapest Model S is something like $95,000 today.
As much as I love Elon and Tesla, it’s glaringly obvious that the other car companies have developed so much QC systems by now that they will absolutely take over the market and will crush Tesla.
So I will remain an admirer of Elon and Tesla but I won’t be buying one nor will I purchase shares in the company.
The article goes on to say that:
>Consumer Reports recommends the Tesla Model 3 sedan and rates its reliability as "average." But Fisher said the rest of Tesla's vehicles are below average.
The popular Model Y SUV, Tesla's best-selling vehicle, has problems with poorly fitting body panels, leaks and issues with its climate control, Fisher said.
The larger Model X SUV "still has problems with the falcon wing doors," Fisher said.
"wing doors"
are as far as I know (which is not much) every (most?) cars which had wing doors had problems with them. Wing doors seem to generally be a bad idea as long as you don't put them on a "super expensive anyway super high maintenance" car (like some super-sport cars).
>About Consumer Reports Annual Auto Reliability Surveys The latest Consumer Reports Annual Auto Reliability Surveys, gathered information from the organization's members on more than 300,000 vehicles from model years 2000 to 2021. Members filled out online surveys in the spring and summer of 2021. CR’s reliability predictions are based on overall reliability for the past three model years, provided the vehicle has not been redesigned. One or two years of data will be used if the model was redesigned in 2021 or 2020. CR bases its reliability analysis on data gathered from CR members each year about problems they had with their vehicles in the past 12 months. CR’s team of statisticians and survey researchers, then analyzed trouble areas and created an overall reliability score for each model and year. Serious problem areas that can lead to expensive repairs are more heavily weighted. More information can be found at www.CR.org.
Do they refer to the battery pack climate control or the climate control inside the cabin of the car? I am living in Israel - a country with a warm climate, so I am a bit weary of EV's that need to cool the battery pack, in order to keep going. Does anyone know how well they keep the battery pack alive in warmer climate zones? (i start to see some teslas, here and there, but I have no idea how well the battery pack stays alive, when it's 40C in the shade)
Is it possible, that they don't have the power to cool the cabin, when they need to cool the battery pack as well?
Our 2021 Y is flawless, and have no problems doing work myself on our older S and X. Your Lexus will burn petroleum forever, and Toyota has no interest in moving to EVs rapidly (and there is evidence they are actively lobbying against moving to EVs).
The economy runs regardless; those with capital must vote with their fiat. Sitting out leads other capital to make decisions that might be suboptimal. Think in terms of systems.
Telling people not to buy cars or electricity will get you laughed out of the room.
But by all means explain to me how strip mining the planet is saving it.
EV6 has vehicle-to-load, faster charging speeds due to 800V system.
And doesn’t look like a pregnant frog from the front/rear.
Y has 3rd row for your little minions though.
It will never be mass market in the same way as Ford or Honda, quality is a culture that takes a lot of time and effort to establish.