Tesla got the worst score in the J.D. Power Initial Quality Survey

[1FASTROD]

Just my opinion on why Tesla is ranked so low;

- Tesla owners are more connected online then most, and show up to pick up their new cars with a list of problems to inspect
- Tesla owners are predominantly engineers, computer folks, scientists or technophiles, I.e. Anal
- Tesla is a newer manufacturer with cars that are still ironing out bugs (I.e. M3 first year had issued)
- Tesla's are more complicated feature wise and we're constantly finding bugs
- Owners of a $20k Dodge are more likely to ignore minor problems than those with a $60k+ Tesla
- Tesla's probably have some manufacturing issues to iron out

I have a Jeep wrangler and it's one of the best selling SUVs with highest resale value. Jeep even ranked higher than average in the survey. If you've never experienced the "death wobble" or interior flooding after a rain storm then count yourself lucky. Yet my tesla is considered worse in quality :rolleyes? Guess they didn't ask the right people.

 

[CapeOne]

Software/tech glitches can be an issue for a lot of automakers but Tesla's biggest downfalls appear to come in the areas of paint quality, fit and finish issues, etc. much of which are often noticed during the first 90 days of ownership. At least some of these things I think can and should be better dealt with during inspection at the factory and during inspection/prep for delivery at local Tesla centers.

 

[0ptions]

I know this is about the Model Y but for me and my 2018 Model 3 vin 23k, I give the vehicle quality a 4/5 and Tesla service a 1/5 based on 4 service appointments I've been to between 3 different locations.

 

[KenC]

The problem with these surveys is that they try to boil everything down into a single number. Not all "problems" are equal.

And, since these are owner surveys, they also exhibit owner bias. Owners of higher-end vehicles will have higher expectations than owners of lower-end vehicles. There's no common baseline for what is or isn't a problem between models.

I mean the Chevy Sonic got the best score of any model! What does that tell you?

Of course that doesn't diminish the fit and finish issues that Tesla has clearly had, but these JDP surveys are pretty meaningless. I would use them mostly for trend analysis. How does the Model 3 improve over time?

 

[TomT]

And that is completely Tesla's fault. They would be better served by allowing access as do all other vehicle manufacturers.

Certainly not trying to defend Tesla here, but I take the ranking with a huge grain of salt when I read that Tesla was not measured the same as every other car:

 

[run-the-joules]

Until people stop buying the cars because the quality is bad, Tesla has no incentive to stop making the quality bad.

 

[GZDongles]

Until people stop buying the cars because the quality is bad, Tesla has no incentive to stop making the quality bad.

That's true to an extent, but present quality drives future sales. Put another way, quality today is a leading indicator of future sales. Quality for luxury car makers is generally worse than for mainstream car makers because:

1. As others have pointed out, the owners are pickier so more issues get identified and need to be corrected
2. There are other good things about the cars (performance, technology, etc.) so buyers will accept a certain level of quality issues without changing their purchasing decision.

However, saying that quality doesn't matter as long as sales are good is a very outdated "American companies in the 80s" style of management. Quality isn't just about revenue, it's about cost. Think of the time spent with rework, customer service, etc. to address these quality issues, both major and minor. As for the revenue side, poor quality performance, and just as importantly the reputation of poor quality performance, affect future sales. While the difference between first and second in a JDP survey probably doesn't matter, you can bet that the fact that Tesla is last by a wide margin will be on the minds of potential buyers. We can question the methodology all we want, but Tesla is on a journey to become more mainstream and doing well in these sort of metrics is part of that.

 

[mattnis]

When every single car that comes out of the factory has terrible panel gaps, and misaligned doors, how about they Teach the line workers how to align doors and measure gaps?

Press release link

Tesla scored an industry worst 250 issues per 100 vehicles. The best OEMs scored ~130.

I knew quality was an issue, but I'm honestly surprised Tesla is so much worse than peers. The grouping of other automakers is fairly tight, but Tesla is a clear outlier. I just picked up my Model 3 LR AWD a few weeks ago, and there were no issues.

I think poor initial quality is a self reinforcing problem. Because of Tesla's reputation for poor quality, I took a 3 page checklist to my delivery appointment and spent 30 minutes going over the car in detail. I wouldn't have bothered doing that with any other manufacturer with a better reputation. So, poor quality scores lead us to be more observant, which leads to more quality issues reported, etc.

What can be done about this? I feel that this is where the lack of a dealership model with proper incentives is biting Tesla. Delivery centers need to be judged on the number of reported customer issues (with actual financial rewards/consequences for performance). This will incentivize delivery centers to do a better job inspecting and correcting cars before delivery.

Tesla's end of quarter push is also crazy and unproductive. Things get missed in the end of quarter rush, and the employees are unevenly utilized. The company is mature enough that they need to get out of the "startup" mentality where they need to prove themselves every quarter in the same way that they did when they were a young public company. Investors at this point want sustained growth and measurable improvements in cash flow, margins, and quality, not these massive disruptive ebbs and flows.

Any other thoughts on ways for Tesla to improve quality?

 

[thx1139]

Post this in the thread corresponding to the site article as well.

The biggest thing I see is this is that the brands with the worst are the more expensive/luxury brands. That seems legit to me. I complained far more to Mercedes, BMW, and Lexus when I owned those brands. I expected far more from them. Also notice this is about issues like paint, body alignment, hood and door closures and noises.

Noises are a special issue. Since my 1st hybrid and then electric vehicles I have noticed noises more since the cars themselves are so much quieter. I didnt notice noises when I had a diesel Mercedes. I noticed the noise of the diesel engine. My BMW had a sporty noisy engine. My Lexus the same. Our Tesla's are whisper quiet. I remember back with our 1st Volt. I reported to the dealership a faint pumping noise and didnt know what it was. Before taking it in they told me that is the pump that runs to keep the gas mixed because it doesnt get used much. I would have never heard that over an ICE engine.

 

[Joshan]

When every single car that comes out of the factory has terrible panel gaps, and misaligned doors, how about they Teach the line workers how to align doors and measure gaps?

I cannot speak for anyone else, but I can assure you my car does not have those issues. It is definitely not "every" car.

 

[robski]

Quality issues is not the same as owner satisfaction. There's definitely correlation though. Let's not kid ourselves, this forum is littered with issues threads, but I don't see myself buying from any other car manufacturer. Issues aside, I love these cars.

 

[diggity]

I ususally dont comment on these type threads because they tend to turn into #!$Q% mud slinging contests between people who feel wronedg by tesla, and people who feel tesla can do no wrong, and the answer is always in the middle.

With that being said, in this case, its my personal opinion that tesla has made a calculated decision that "good enough, is good enough, because better than good enough costs more money than we have to spend right now".

Initial quality will get better for tesla when other manufacturers produce a product that competes directly with tesla that people want to buy, and tesla is forced to up the quality by slowing down production (to spend more time on QC ing the cars) or, has enough money to higher more people to do so.

I believe they know exactly what they need to do, they just feel that they dont have the money to do so, and dont NEED to do so because the cars still sell. They had to prioritize company survival over "making sure each car has absolutely zero paint issues" for example.

TL ; DR .... Initial quality will get better when they have the money to spend on additional QC people that are needed to get this done, and they wont do this until they are forced to by the marketplace, or are flush with cash.

Yes to this and very well put. This was especially true a year and a half ago when cash flow was questioned. While their technology is awesome, customer service as a whole is lacking. The people who I have spoken to and technicians are all very nice, but trying to get a hold of someone on the phone for a simple question is next to impossible. Service centers seem restrained from solving some issues unless pushed by the customer. If the technology wasn't as good as it is, they would be in some deep trouble. Luckily for them, the product they turn out is amazing. I have had two Model 3's, and while they have had minor issues (panel gap, etc.) when delivered, they were still a pain for me to deal with and did need for me to be a bit pushy for Tesla to fix them. They were eventually fixed, but this could all be resolved fairly easily with better production QC.

 

[one2many]

Well I will wade into this blue ink vs. black ink. I have never heard of a friend
telling me he bought a car based on JD, popular housekeeping or triple D's.
None of these folks bake my cakes and the car is what a car is. My wife told me
to buy this car and that's the first time I listened to her in last 10 years. Some turn out good
and some not so good, No need to get excited about JD housekeeping IHOP.

 

[strykeroz]

I'd not heard of this report before. But either it doesn't mesh with the owner satisfaction ones you read about, or owners who respond to those reports don't rate these issues as highly. I think that's an observation Sandy Munro made.

My own experience is panel fit on my SR+ is great, but my most recent Honda CR-V had a misaligned bonnet from new, and one of the 4 wheel caps had the H badge in a slightly different colour to the others. TBH that never impacted the way the car drove and I traded it on the SR+ with those faults intact.

So far the only QC issue I've picked up with the SR+ is it had different tyre valve caps on each side of the car. I'm not reporting that either.

Seems all cars have their faults, so I won't be losing sleep over this report I just learned about.

 

[focher]

I count myself so fortunate that our X and 3P have been fine. Flaws? Yep. But definitely nothing that would make me give up driving a Tesla - for all its benefits. EV performance, self-driving, long distance charging. Sign me up over and over and over again.

 

[austinmichaeld]

I think that the people buying tesla vehicles for the most part are not expecting perfection. I know my car had three issues when mine was delivered. High end auto manufacturers are usually less hasty to get the car in your hands and more focused on making sure that their products are fitting of their name and image. Tesla fanboys will excuse anything and spin it.

 

[camalaio]

I'm a little shocked they're at the very bottom, but not overly so. Rushed deliveries, poor QC, and poor software quality control are all part of the experience. It doesn't excuse it IMO, but it does explain it.

Definitely agree. But Tesla operates differently than others. They aren't afraid to push software out when it isn't perfect. That is hopefully mentioned in all these articles.

I want to clarify if you're saying that makes it OK? As a software guy I try to make sure updates don't break different things because customers get mad about that sort of thing, and rightly so I thought. Is that not the case?

I've always treated Tesla's updates as a negative, honestly, since I come from the software world. They have brought me very few features I want or like while introducing a few bugs and/or negative behaviours. Perhaps I'm a grumpy old man.

I am so confused about the "poor quality" remarks. Are people really more worried if the hood is .0001 farther to the left than the right? To me "quality" means how reliably it gets me to where I am going without any issues or surprises and how often it needs service.

Thus far it is the highest "quaity" car I have ever owned. I have owned Porsche Boxster and currently also own an Acura RDX. They both required repairs and towing...

The panel gap thing is a meme at this point, but it's far from the majority of complaints I'd guess. Panels are off on mine, but they weren't what I complained about. I complained about the dull paint in one area (looked like a botched repair), broken interior panels/clips so stuff was hanging, there was a failing door latch form day one, the glovebox so far askew it rubs when going back in and is actually hard to close, ~5% of the time the screen is black when I get in the car for ~2 minutes, AutoSteer just doesn't work right in my car (hugs the left, crosses the centre line), etc. I can't even remember everything that was looked at. My signal stalks have also been replaced twice.

Are they mostly minor? Yeah. Like another commenter said though, people pay a lot of money for these things. I didn't pay so much money for my car to just not be able to "start" for a bit at least once a month. The complaints for other manufacturers are probably just as trivial honestly.

For my Honda, they had a rip on the steering wheel and the back seatbelts were installed behind the seats. Both were fixed immediately and without hassle, but with much apology. Everything with the infotainment always worked, and continued to worked every day after that.

 

[HyperionMark]

I'm a little shocked they're at the very bottom, but not overly so. Rushed deliveries, poor QC, and poor software quality control are all part of the experience. It doesn't excuse it IMO, but it does explain it.



I want to clarify if you're saying that makes it OK? As a software guy I try to make sure updates don't break different things because customers get mad about that sort of thing, and rightly so I thought. Is that not the case?

I've always treated Tesla's updates as a negative, honestly, since I come from the software world. They have brought me very few features I want or like while introducing a few bugs and/or negative behaviours. Perhaps I'm a grumpy old man.



The panel gap thing is a meme at this point, but it's far from the majority of complaints I'd guess. Panels are off on mine, but they weren't what I complained about. I complained about the dull paint in one area (looked like a botched repair), broken interior panels/clips so stuff was hanging, there was a failing door latch form day one, the glovebox so far askew it rubs when going back in and is actually hard to close, ~5% of the time the screen is black when I get in the car for ~2 minutes, AutoSteer just doesn't work right in my car (hugs the left, crosses the centre line), etc. I can't even remember everything that was looked at. My signal stalks have also been replaced twice.

Are they mostly minor? Yeah. Like another commenter said though, people pay a lot of money for these things. I didn't pay so much money for my car to just not be able to "start" for a bit at least once a month. The complaints for other manufacturers are probably just as trivial honestly.

For my Honda, they had a rip on the steering wheel and the back seatbelts were installed behind the seats. Both were fixed immediately and without hassle, but with much apology. Everything with the infotainment always worked, and continued to worked every day after that.

I can understand if you are coming from the software world that the bugs would drive you crazy. Personally they don't bother me and in some ways reinforce that I'm on the bleeding edge tech-wise.

 

[camalaio]

I can understand if you are coming from the software world that the bugs would drive you crazy. Personally they don't bother me and in some ways reinforce that I'm on the bleeding edge tech-wise.

Interesting (truly, I mean that). I actively avoid bleeding edge of anything to avoid problems (i.e. I won't buy the first model year of a generation of vehicles either). I'd always rather wait for polish!

 

[Stickboy46]

All those other manufacturers have a middle man that is vested in fixing problems before it makes it to the customer.... The dealerships. It the other manufacturers have things slip through the factory, they can fix them before a customer sees them. They don't want to get stuck with a car, so they do that. Tesla delivers directly to the customer so they don't have that benefit.

Not saying that Tesla QC is great or anything but it's a little apples to oranges when you survey end customers and then proclaim that's how it came out of the factory.