PSA: You can find people whining about build quality for any brand

[AnxietyRanger]

@EinSV That's why, to be clear, I am not relying on anecdotal evidence. On reliability I just haven't formed or educated myself to form an opinion. Consumer Reports is pretty much unknown in Europe, I don't even know what they measure and what to think of it. So, not much of a comment from me there...

But I do sincerely believe Tesla rushes cars through manufacturing and quarterly deliveries, to meet quarterly goals. I think that has systematic repercussions on build quality and is not merely a matter of anecdotal observation.

 

[Electroman]

Anxiety Ranger - you need to stop 'post-bombing' every thread that you want to whine about. We have all heard you loud and clear 8172 times. Can we hear from other folks?

I want this forum to be an equal opportunity whiner platform.

.. make that 8173..

 

[jelloslug]

So do you not think Tesla's desire to push fast quarterly deliveries is unique?

Almost every business is like that, especially publicly traded ones.

 

[AnxietyRanger]

Almost every business is like that, especially publicly traded ones.

Not when it comes to pushing car deliveries to end-customers within the quarter of manufacturing, no, that is quite unique to Tesla. Sure, everyone cares about quarterly results (public companies), but in-quarter end-customer car deliveries are not really a thing in the industry at all.

One big reason is that Tesla's only customer is the end-customer, not a dealership in the middle. Tesla thus has an extra incentive to make a quick delivery, because that is where the money is.

But IMO mostly it is because Tesla simply has started doing it this way and since they started down that road, to always improve on the past quarter, they apparenly feel the need to keep doing it. If they changed their ways now, at least one quarter would look worse before things got better.

The end-result is, Tesla would rather you drive the car home and drive it back later for fixes and changes, than take their time to deliver a perfect car.

 

[NewTMSMan]

I can emphatically say that my Teslas (Model S and X) are easily the least reliable cars I have ever owned, and by a long shot. If the contention is that people complaining about build quality and reliability are overly critical than in my individual case that would also apply to the cars I have owned in the past 5 years (Audi R8, Porsche Panamera 4S, Corvette Z06/Z07, Volvo V60 CC, BMW 3 series to name a few). All cars have minor delivery issues, but in the 3+ months I have owned my Teslas they have individually both been out of service for almost 15% of the days I have owned them and as I post this today they will actually both be at the Service Center as after getting my X back from service last week, it had Parking Brake and Steering warnings when my wife drove it Sunday and Tesla has had my S trying to fix some minor issues for almost a week now.

It is everything from small issues, like Slacker radio still not working properly after over a month of issues that I was told Tesla knows about, to issues with Wifi on all Teslas that took me getting a network engineer involved to find what was causing it (Tesla Wifi stack is designed poorly and restarts when it encounters certain network traffic), to bigger issues like the air suspension failing on my Model S and twice now my Model X having system failures that made it un-driveable.

You are correct there are people complaining about many individual cars and all brands have issues, but in my individual experience Tesla has more than others.

As an aside, if people feel Tesla has high build quality just post pictures of your door trim alignment on both sides of the car. I am willing to bet it is not aligned. You can say this doesn't matter, but it is an indicator of build quality for many people just like rattles and creaks.

 

[Tiger]

Please stop making excuses for bad quality, admitting the problem is the first step to beginning of recovery.