My comments are based on having worked with JD Power on behalf of a major OEM luxury vehicles.
In this and other JD Power related comments nobody seems to be understanding what the 233 question initial quality survey (IQS) really is. It includes all items with equal weight and specifically includes:
U.S. Initial Quality Study (IQS)
By survey definition, 'problems' are defined to explicitly include 'learning curve' issues, and weighs any learning curve issues as 'problems. Four of the nine categories are ones that make into problems anything at all that requires reading or learning anything to sue the vehicle. For that reason, and no other, the rankings reflect vehicle differences from generic simple vehicles. That means that cheap simple vehicles are the ones with the best ratings and complex or unusual ones have poor ratings. Check out the rankings and you'll see that is the major influencer of rankings.
Thus almost no highly ranked vehicle ever can have high ratings and the most unusual and/or most technologically advanced one will be at the bottom. A Tesla is the definitive unusual and technologically advanced vehicle so it will be at the bottom of the IQS.
Similarly the vehicles with highest loyalty measured by any reputable surveys tend to be inversely correlated with their IQS ratings.
For years Porsche, Mercedes Benz and BMW higher end models held the relative positions similar to those of Tesla today.
Starting in the early 1990's that began to change, although the general relationships have not. Why? The answer is simple: manufacturers began to design vehicles to optimize IQS. Thus brands such as Lexus, the first to design for IQS, made controls as simple as possible and did everything they could to eliminate anything unusual in any way. Others did not, and sought distinction and increased functions. Those, like BMW and Porsche, suffered in IQS but gained in owner loyalty.
For understandable but misguided reasons JD Power retained the name IQS and continued to represent it as something related to actual manufacturing quality or defects. Those are included, but all the ranking differences tend to relate to the four categories of Climate, Driving Assistance, features/controls/displays and Infotainment. Again, why?
Simply stated the actual quality of vehicle construction has risen by orders of magnitude in the last two decades because increased quality control and increased cost efficiency are closely related and have been assisted by increased automation and other quality control techniques. So, the differentiating factors have essentially nothing to do with actual quality.
Why, then all the endless complaints about poor Tesla quality? I think there are four principal factors: 1) until about 2014 Tesla Model S had quite a few problems, until ~2017 Model X had FWD etc, in 2017 Model 3 had 'production hell'. That sequence of manufacturing and technology learning curves was true. 2) Operating a Tesla is different than other vehicles and many of our prized features, like FSD, are Beta; nobody else has the willingness to allow customers to use something before ti is 'bulletproof'
3) The Fudsters and other negative people seek to magnify anything at all and create negatives if they can. 4) Tesla eschews the dealer system. That makes customer service odd and unconventional as does the online initiation for nearly all encounters.
Those four have nothing much to do with the actual vehicles which is why Tesla has the highest customer satisfaction and owner enthusiasm in the industry. Of course, because owners are passionate about their Tesla vehicles, owners are also very critical, obsessively so. Thus we all complain incessantly, as do I. again, of course, most of us buy more Tesla vehicles after our first ones and then gripe about delivery issues, upgrade sequences, etc. Probably we'll all keep doing that as will the increasing numbers of new Tesla drivers. Yet again, of course, the new drivers will complain because their new Tesla does not get the 'promised range', even when the new 'P' owners are doing repeated launches in the dead of winter.
In conclusion, we ought to stop thinking the JD Power IQS ha anything to do with panel gaps etc. It doesn't.