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Consumer Reports gives the Model S a low reliability rating "44" out of a 100?

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I just don't think Tesla's engineering and manufacturing quality is there yet. I'm sorry to say. PD recently published a photo showing that his ultrasonic sensors are held in place behind the bumper with nothing more than zip ties. ZIP TIES! I think you'd be hard pressed to find such a low bar in a German, or even Japanese, car

What/who is PD?

All the bumpers/nosecones I've seen with ultrasonics have clips built into the bumper, just like every other car. (Bodyshop even showed me a bumper when I was researching upgrading my car to parking sensors, it had clips built into the bumper where the sensors snap into.)
 
What's wrong with zip ties?
IMG_4548.PNG
 
What/who is PD?

All the bumpers/nosecones I've seen with ultrasonics have clips built into the bumper, just like every other car. (Bodyshop even showed me a bumper when I was researching upgrading my car to parking sensors, it had clips built into the bumper where the sensors snap into.)
Plus rubber weatherproof covers (on later models such as 2015).
 
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Similar story here. After a few service visits in 2013 - most of which were for FREE UPGRADES rather than fixing something broken - our 2012 has been a very good car. It compares favorably to our 2015. I know other pleased 2012 owners. Definitely not the case that all early cars sucked.

They might (?) have been statistically worse, but a lot of individual cars are great. Of course, that is part of the problem with this type of reliability statistics - even cars with poor ratings can still have most customers be happy, because average problem rates have plummeted over the past few decades. Mist cars just don't have problems these days, so the reliability figures mean less for most customer's experience.
I'll start by saying I love my car and plan to keep it quite a long time.:D But, I have to say when I bought the CPO I figured it would be in pretty much new shape. And with only 18,000 miles on it, it should not need too many repairs. 13 months later it has been in and out of the shop (no more than 2 days at a time and they gave me a loaner) over a dozen times for about 23 or more warranty repairs.o_O It's even heading in tomorrow for more warranty repairs. This is a ton for 13 months of ownership. If it wasn't such a fantastic car (while its not being fixed) I would not have put up with this poor reliably. IMHO when there is anything that is this new, ahead of the game, it falls into the catagory "bleeding edge of technology" more than " leading edge of technology". It is the price you pay for being first. You are the one that will find every issue, and will help the product evolve.

When they hand my MS back to me each time after the repair I can't imagine diving anything else

It's worth it....until it isn't lol
 
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Actually Tesla seems to have the bleeding edge technology stuff pretty well nailed except for the drive unit/ noise problem. It is the car stuff that is most of the problem. I hope they find some budget money for durability testing and to hire some people who actually know how to build cars. That being said, my car is reasonably well built and has not given me any reason to take it in. Probably good as I live a two day boat ride ftom the DS.
 
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All you have to do is read this forum to know reliability has been drastically improved. Hint: go all the way back to 2012 posts and read forward to this point in time.

CR giving Tesla a reliability score based on a handful of owners who decided to fill out a questionnaire doesn't make their assertion true either. But then you knew that.

Anecdotal evidence that in 2012 things were bad doesn't tell you the CR rating is wrong today. Reliability is calculated over time, so for example you cannot measure it for the car coming off the line today until that car has been on the road for at least few months. If you want anecdotal evidence from this forum, you can definitely find stories on recent cars that failed too, but again, so what. My personal experience is 2013 car no problems for 2 years, 2015 needed a bunch of minor fixes in first 6 months - again, that's just my 2 cars, it's purely anecdotal. Reliability score is based on larger sample. Note that the reliability score doesn't say "cars coming off the line today will fail at rate X" , what is says is "car produced to date have failed at rate X" . That's all.
 
Yes, of course. The reliability of the first few thousand cars is what's most important to people buying a car today, particularly when said vehicle gets multiple engineering changes every week and the car keeps being improved. :rolleyes: You'd think Tesla was operating just like all the other OEMs who make changes to their cars every 5 or so years, whether they need them or not. CR and some here have the same problem; thinking Tesla does no improvements to the car's reliability and will simply wait until there's a serious issue to then go recall them all to fix them.

No, you are wrong about assuming everyone except Tesla is stuck in 1970s production methods. I have worked for BMW many years ago and even back then they made changes so their cars all the time, not every 5 years. It's totally normal for car companies these days to make small improvements all the time.
 
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No, you are wrong about assuming everyone except Tesla is stuck in 1970s production methods. I have worked for BMW many years ago and even back then they made changes so their cars all the time, not every 5 years. It's totally normal for car companies these days to make small improvements all the time.

You're suggesting that BMW made/makes the same amount of changes to their cars, of the same degree of significance, as Tesla does to their cars on a regular basis? If so, please provide evidence of such. I'll accept their CEO making public statements about it, along with evidence of OTA firmware updates, along with partial body changes like front fascia, along with regular battery - err...gas tank?...changes, along with motor (engine) changes, along with customer remarks (via whatever medium you can find) about differences they've noticed, along with voluntary recalls equivalent to adding safety stuffs ala titanium shields, etc...

I've no doubt BMW made engineering changes in their cars between major model 'makeovers'. I've every doubt they come within spitting distance of the changes that Tesla makes on a weekly basis.
 
Sure. Okay. It also doesn't tell me that the CR rating is right.
Of course. The only possible scenario where anecdotal evidence from this forum could disprove CR rating is if they gave Tesla 100.000% perfect rating and you could disprove it by pointing to even a single failure. Except in this corner case, anecdotal evidence like this tells you NOTHING about the CR rating's accuracy.
 
CR giving Tesla a reliability score based on a handful of owners who decided to fill out a questionnaire doesn't make their assertion true either. But then you knew that.
It is NOT a handful. In the past, they've always required a minimum of 100 responses for a given model year to not have insufficient data.
How many people here participated in the survey?

From Car Reliability FAQ | Answers to Reliability Questions - Consumer Reports
How many samples do you have of each model?
While we do not publish information on individual sample sizes for specific models, we require a minimum of around 100 cars to publish reliability information for a model in a given model year. Our sample sizes tend to track quite closely with market sales. Individual sample sizes vary from year to year and range from a hundred to several thousand for the more popular models. A typical model has about 200 to 400 samples for each model year.
They've removed that verbiage this year at Car Reliability FAQ | Answers to Reliability Questions - Consumer Reports but still mentioned typically 200 to 400.

Tesla Reliability Doesn’t Match Its High Performance says
As part of our Annual Auto Reliability Survey, we received about 1,400 survey responses from Model S owners who chronicled an array of detailed and complicated maladies.
100 per model year, 200 to 400 per model year or 1,400 is a lot more than a handful, in my book.
 
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I would aways use Consumer Reports as a gauge of "reliability" when purchasing a car but basically ignored it when I purchased my MS a few months back because:

1. Some car manufacturers had a multi year (even multi decade) pattern of producing unreliable vehicles...those i stayed away from. Tesla hasn't been around that long and everything points to more reliable vehicles going forward.
2. Elon Musk stated about 20 improvements are made to the MS weekly, and many fixes occur over the air without needing to bring the car into the shop.
3. Tesla has a proven track record of taking of their customers. There were many stories of early Tesla adopters being taken care of even when an issue wasn't under warranty etc.

Update: Just hit my 6 month anniversary w/no reliability issues. As an aside, I did call service in regards to what I thought was an issue and they trouble-shot the problem over the phone without my needing to bring in the car (turned out to be a setting I screwed up).

And just an observation after being active on this forum for awhile: Frequently, there are threads/posts e.g. "Auto Pilot Caused Accident" that the driver thinks there's a problem but in fact a system is functioning correctly but 1. the driver didn't read the owners manual or 2. didn't understand the function of said system. For those of us who read this forum regularly this is a real and common thing. I wonder how many of the reported CR reliability issues are these types of things?
 
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Update: Just hit my 6 month anniversary w/no reliability issues. As an aside, I did call service in regards to what I thought was an issue and they trouble-shot the problem over the phone without my needing to bring in the car (turned out to be a setting I screwed up).

And just an observation after being active on this forum for awhile: Frequently, there are threads/posts e.g. "Auto Pilot Caused Accident" that the driver thinks there's a problem but in fact a system is functioning correctly but 1. the driver didn't read the owners manual or 2. didn't understand the function of said system. For those of us who read this forum regularly this is a real and common thing. I wonder how many of the reported CR reliability issues are these types of things?
First, your 5 month old S wasn't even part of the CU survey. It was 2012-2015 and there is no doubt car's have gotten better over time.
Second, the type of issues in the article; replaced drive unit, broken door handles, sunroof seals, misaligned body parts and such are things that were discovered and fixed by Tesla. Tesla wouldn't replace a DU or align a fender because an owner didn't "understand" something from the Owners Manual.
 
What percentage of 2012 and 2013 cars still have untouched drivetrains and battery? Gone through to today with decent mileage without requiring service?
I think the rating the give is fair and consistent with how other cars are rated, just little reason to be put off considering problems tended to exhibit themselves early, and have become less prevalent in newer cars?
 
Lies/damn lies and statistics.
The problem as always is summarizing data into simple headlines when the underlying picture is more complicated.

Most manufacturers wil have "problem" years when something goes awry.

The only way for Tesla to deal with the agregation of historical data like this is to up-issue the model periodically.
eg the S could have become an S mk2 with the facelift.

Most people here likely have the wit to read behind the headlines, but to many casual (prospective)owners misleading headline data from CR can be very damaging to the market.
 
there's an old adage regarding new car models, new car companies that goes something like this, you should never buy the first cars of a new model or production cycle because all the kinks have not been worked out or even found, that you should wait until the car is around awhile so the inevitable issues can be worked out.
this holds true for tesla, the earliest models had many flaws, most were minor and a few like the DU issues and the battery contact issues were serious. tesla took very good care of the early owners and always repaired and corrected any flaws that turned up. The newer model Ss are almost flawless, mine is approaching on year with zero issues.
the model X being so innovative with those doors are about a year+ in the production cycle and there have been many issues with them but again tesla seems to be very proactive with their commitment to making the cars right.
CU is just reporting on the issues found, I don't believe that they have any sort of agenda.
while I would still be wary of buying an X I wouldn't hesitate for a moment if I needed to replace my current car with a new model S.
 
The response of (some) owners here is really confusing. These are expensive cars, with typical buyers that are much more intelligent and successful than the average guy stuck with a Toyota Corolla. And yet, someone published some statistics that show the model S has a number of reoccurring reliability issues (which are well documented on THIS FORUM), and all of a sudden the defensive denial posts begin. Are you guys really this incapable of being objective just because you have already made the decision and you need nothing but positive reinforcement?

Potential market for a little box that plugs into the car and quietly whispers "you made the right decision" over and over???
 
Well that was a bit snarky. Considering the amount of documented misinformation regarding Tesla(fake news stories, fake reports to NHTSA, fake social media posts etc. etc.) it really isn't that much of a stretch that CR can be compromised(it's only 19.99 for an online subscription so a few thousand bucks buys a pretty effective smear campaign) and as many of us are very satisfied Tesla owners, being a bit cynical regarding this type of report is warranted.
 
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