In thinking about the Consumer Reports article after starting this thread yesterday afternoon, it occurred to me that Tesla needs to get ahead of the potential internet meme that Model S's aren't reliable (which will gain traction if CR's annual survey shows problems in their sample) by fighting data with data. Consumer Reports is respected because they're data-driven and have a reasonable sample of members who respond to their surveys; that said, because Tesla has a closed-loop feedback system with all maintenance done in their own service centers, they are positioned like no other automobile manufacturer to be more transparent about where the problems have been, how they've dealt with them, and how their solutions have translated into reduced problems in later VIN cars.
So for example, Tesla could publish data (even a dashboard on their website) on broad categories such as drivetrain, HVAC, body integrity, alignment & brakes, etc. (mirroring some of the categories that Consumer Reports uses in their annual surveys) and break down actual Service Center events into things that were brought in by owners as active problems (let's call those Category 1) versus things that were done pro-actively by Tesla at routine maintenance (Category 2) and finally things that Tesla went out of their way to pro-actively intervene such as Ranger visits to replace components (Category 3), all to bring the car up to new spec.
A good example was the issue of 12 volt battery failures early on. A bar chart of VINs along the horizontal axis would show that there was an early signal of Category 1 events, Tesla began proactively doing both Category 2 & 3 events and the Category 1 events went away. Another example are the instrument clusters which were replaced pro-actively (Category 2 for me) when a small batch had problems with soldering. We could go on and on about the different things that have been discussed on these forums, but we've all seen how Tesla sees a problem, figures out a fix and pushes it out to everyone.
I really think that Tesla could demonstrate a degree of transparency and data-driven CQI (continuous quality improvement) that would 1) be refreshing; 2) be reassuring to potential buyers; 3) lend support to Tesla's stated goal of a maintenance-free automobile; and 4) help inoculate them and get ahead of the meme that Model S's are unreliable.
Maybe this is totally naïve but I think that for a data-driven company like Tesla, fighting a limited dataset (CR's) with a complete dataset would be the way to go. I'd be astonished if they don't already look at data like this in their weekly QA meetings with Elon.
