Dissing Tesla Reliability

Interesting, but actually nearly all high end vehicles have lower reliability than your garden variety Camry or Accord. BMW's and Mercedes have huge maintenance costs. Jaguars are famously unreliable as are all Italian makes. Yet people keep dropping 6 figures for Bentley, Rolls Royce, Ferrari, Masarati etc.

For practically anyone coming from something that was expensive before, the Model S is low maintenance and highly reliable.

Article Author Note: ** Author is short TSLA - Author has a vested financial interest in TSLA stock going down. That's all I need to know right there.

 

I don't agree, I've never had as many MINOR issues and 1 MAJOR issue with any car I've owned like I've had with my Tesla, from lowly GM cars to high end MBs, BMWs, Porsches and Lexus. and to make life more difficult the SC center that was promised and almost 2 years later it is still list as coming. The concept of having a local service center was the one thing that pushed me over the edge into buying the car.

 

There are certainly some drive unit issues. What no one outside Tesla knows is how widespread. Consumer Reports surveys seem to indicate less than 1% have issues with the drive unit. The True Delta site is suspect to me (selection bias). It seems likely to attract people who have had issues. Another issue with that blog post is that most drive unit replacements are for noise, not failures, which to me at least is a big difference.

 

I'd be willing to wager that the D/U issue is affecting more than 1% of owners.
Using TMC as a sampling, at least 200 people here have noted having an issue with the D/U and an extremely small amount of owners are aware that this site exists. the consumer's reports sampling is even smaller.

 

I certainly am relieved to see that CR reports an unwavering "Excellent" for the Model S exhaust systems.

 

TMC poll is not a statistically accurate predictor, it is clearly a biased data, it was discussed in detail.

There is no data on how large Consumer Reports Model S sample, but it is an independent professional organization employing statisticians and automotive engineers, doing professional statistical analysis for many decades. They do not publish results if the sample is to small to draw valid conclusions.

As for the author of the article, he is known for border nonsensical articles on Tesla, with a dismal record of any of his (invariably dire) predictions actually materializing.

 

Consumer reports actually did put out a number, at least they did in 2013. So it might be larger now. That number is over 600 owners.

Tesla Model S Recommended | Car Reliability - Consumer Reports News

 

I wasn't claiming anything, I was noting the number of participants in the TMC poll is so small that the results are insignificant and the CR sample is even smaller. I also wasn't commenting on the veracity of the author of the report, I was refuting the claim that less than 1% of Tesla cars are afflicted with the cicada/drive unit flaw.

 

Keep in mind many customers won't notice they have a drive unit issue, especially if they are hard of hearing or more importantly actually use their radio for music.

 

How can one "refute" professionally prepared statistical data using the results of biased poll?

Regarding the sample of the data, statistical analysis includes formulas indicating whether results are valid based on size of the sample. CR use this method, and when size of the sample is to small, they do not report the results, noting "insufficient data".

Lastly, there currently is no information on the CR latest sample size, so one can't say that it is "even smaller" than quantity of TMC responders. As Evme noted above, the size of CR sample was more than 600 in 2013.

 

True Delta shows that 50% of the issues are Body&trim. Consumer reports reflects the same giving those categories poor/good ratings. Then you have Engine and Electrical systems, which also seems reflected in the consumer reports rating at least in the Drive system category.

 

Thanks, now I don't have click on the article!

 

I guess you don't know about Truedelta.com

Model S vs. LEAF Reliability

Sign up and you can dig into the repairs reported and add your car to the database (possibly lowering the reported rate of repairs).

It's free so no reason not to add your car to the database.

 

I don't know anything about the reliability or credibility of truedelta.com but I can say with first hand experience since I have owned a LEAF and a Tesla, the LEAF NEVER needed any sort of service (1 courtesy service center visit after a year of ownership for them to be sure nothing needed attention and I had the car for 18k miles) while the Tesla has had 2 MAJOR and 4 MINOR issues that necessitated a visit to the service center over the 20 months and 20k miles that I've had it.

 

The problem with anecdotal data is that it's useless.

It's quite likely and predictable that early Tesla VINs (say under 25k, 30k?) had many major and minor issues -- BECAUSE IT WAS A NEW CAR FROM A COMPANY WITH NO EXPERIENCE MASS MANUFACTURING CARS. Is that so hard to believe/comprehend? Cars are complex machines.

On the other hand, it's now going into it's 4th year of production relatively unchanged. It's probably quite reliable by now, since they've produced 100k of them and have had 3 full years to squash virtually anything even remotely resembling a reliability trend.

Kind of crazy that the folks doling out 130k for early Model X's are signing up for what will undoubtedly turn out to be the least reliable version of that vehicle. But what do I know...

 

I'd say one thing is for sure that truedelta has more data than a single anecdotal observation. :wink:

Larry

 

And what incentive do the thousands upon thousands of people with no car trouble have to search for such a site and add their car to the database? Any site that relies on voluntary reporting ALWAYS has a huge bias towards the small percentage actually having issues.

Consumer Reports and Tesla are the only ones who have valid data on MS reliability, the former claims reliability is Average, the Later hasn't said. ALL other sources are useless for the purpose of determining reliability.

And as a side note, don't ever click on seekingalpha, it's all garbage from people with a huge vested interest. you'll never find anything unbiased on that site.

 

Consumer Reports data is inaccurate for many reasons and is obfuscated. Truedelta is open shared data updated quarterly versus the yearly data CR publishes. I'd argue this is analogous to Wikipedia and the internet in general vs hardback encyclopedias. People wised up and stopped buying outdated overpriced hardback encyclopedias at some point and I think it was worth the transition.

It's in the interest of all consumers to join Truedelta and add their data. It's the same reason people write reviews on Amazon or on Yelp or any other site that allows users to submit reviews. It's just that for Truedelta you input data quarterly not a review. The sites owner does the work with the statistics to reduce bias as much as possible and if you read the documentation on the site you'll see the mathematical differences between TD and CR laid out for all to see.

Seriously if you don't know about it don't diss it, just read up on it or ignore it. But if you care about cars at all you should spend some time looking at the site and the data it has and go ahead and add your data to the mix for the good of the community.

If you want to read up on it archived blog entries on truedelta vs CR at TrueDelta | Blog Consumer Reports

And to be clear if you google Michael Karesh (the creator of truedelta) you'll find he is not anti Telsa and posts constructive supportive comments when discussing Tesla. His site and his posts that I've read are about as vender neutral as I've seen (so long as you look at content about the car companies and models and not about Consumer Reports).

 

This. When I signed up my LEAF on Truedelta years ago I had no idea whether or not I would be reporting issues. Every few months I get an email asking me to check-in and update my service history, which I have done. If I manage to get a Model 3 I'll be signing up the first week to add to the database.

It has nothing to do with people stopping by just to report problems. Michael Karesh's Truedelta tries to get all car owners to participate and give regular service feedback over many years. Don't knock it until you've actually checked it out.