> The 10% is not as bad as it sounds, because the author fails to mention that these statistics are heavily in favour of expensive cars with a good dealership network. And Tesla has no dealerships at all, as far as I know.
Tesla has dealerships, but this is irrelevant. You are referring to garages, which can be included within a dealership. If you bought a car, you can opt into these contracts. Otherwise you can become a customer of any garage.
All cars were compared.
There are still 10% of teslas, who can not successfuly survive the initial inspection without additional maintenance.
> When you own something like a BMW, you typically don't drive the car to the inspection yourself. Especially not if it's a leased or company car. Instead, you bring your car to the dealership (or they will pick it up), they inspect the car, fix any issues they encounter and only then bring in an official inspector for the actual inspection. This way, the inspector will hardly find any issues. Also, dealerships typically don't chose TÜV, but one of their competitors that do the inspection at the dealership.
This is valid for any car, regardless of its age or brand, if a garage presents your vehicle for inspection. No need to refer to "german car brands".
Also competitors need to respect the same criterias.
> TÜV is where people go who want to save money by skipping the dealership.
The price for the check is fixed. You only fail the check, if there are crucial safety issues or oil leaks.
The majority of car owners is thankful for a safety hint from the inspector.
> Most people who do this drive cheaper cars. That's why cheap cars are always having much worse numbers in these statistics.
That is an assumption.
> They are alternative statistics, like ADAC's (Germany's equivalent to AAA), but they all have the same problem. There are no good statistics for German cars. They all favour expensive German brands because those who the statistics will never see a broken car.
This is a biased assumption.
> The dealerships will always take care of that. I'd rather trust US-based Consumer Reports than TÜV or ADAC statistics.
The dealership only takes care of problems iff you either signed an maintenance contract and additional insurance, the issue needs to be solved due to warranty or you accept the charges neccessary to fix the problems.
It simply _is_ the case that tesla has a lower quality then any other europe car brand. Dacia is on the same level as tesla in terms of haptics - but their internas (chassis, engine, bearings..., etc.) are siblings of mature brands.
The TÜV is responsible for checking for safety - Inspectors will get their license permanently revoked if they did not spot an serious issue. I would trust TÜV over any american report.
When an accident happens and a certain money cap is reached, insurances will investigate and escalate to anybody. The TÜV will not prefer any car brand and take these risks.
You do also insult any inspector (DEKRA, GTU or TÜV) by promoting such implications.