
Tesla lags auto industry in quality, finds new J.D. Power study - doener
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/24/tesla-lags-auto-industry-in-quality-finds-new-jd-power-study.html
======
ggreer
Annoyingly, I can't find the original report by J.D. Power. Ars Technica has a
more detailed summary.[1] Apparently the study favors cars with fewer
features, as that means fewer things can go wrong. The results contradict
brand stereotypes. Honda and Toyota are below the industry average. Volvo is
one of the worst, along with luxury brands such as Mercedes-Benz, Audi, and
Land Rover. The best rated are Dodge, Kia, and Chevrolet. Also this survey
reflects initial impressions, not long term reliability.

Seriously though: I would pay money for a news organization that always linked
to primary sources. Bonus points for archiving them at the time of
publication. I don't need a journalist to play Chinese whispers with me.[2]
I'm an adult and I can interpret the information for myself.

1\. [https://arstechnica.com/cars/2020/06/teslas-are-the-most-
unr...](https://arstechnica.com/cars/2020/06/teslas-are-the-most-unreliable-
new-cars-in-the-us-survey-finds/)

2\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_whispers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_whispers)

~~~
Shivetya
Well to be honest, I own a model 3, you just have to be a member of the
subreddit if not any of the Tesla related sites to know that more than a few
people have a nightmarish time with new car delivery. It isn't like these cars
loaded with features, I have yet to read anyone having issues with the display
and tech as it is always panel alignment and overall fit and finish.

Now if you also read the same you will find the Chinese side of Tesla
apparently has an entirely different outcome. Their quality is superb with
workers across the plant invested to the point no one wants to embarrass
another. So what to do US side? Having had friends and family in the industry
where they worked the line you get the same issues you have in any business.
There are those who are just there to punch a clock and it is always some
other person's job. Please don't try the tired retort of pay, myself and I am
sure others here can attest to having worked with people who pay isn't going
to fix them.

Well if Tesla cannot insure the people at all stations on the line think
otherwise they need to invest heavily on the end of the line and make sure
that their delivery centers have no reason to ever have to work on a
customer's car. Those employees must be able to fail a car without question.
The only acceptable issues at that point would be damage during transit.

I know my next EV will not be a Tesla, they have nothing in their pipeline I
want; well let me be honest nothing I should buy but that truck is obnoxious
enough to just have; and another fear is they are not concentrating on
quality.

~~~
pja
It’s always easy to blame the workers but, in the vast majority of cases, poor
quality output is a management issue.

Other car manufacturers have managed to create production lines that churn out
high quality vehicles every 90 seconds (or better) for decades now. When it
comes to these fit & finish issues, panel alignment etc etc there is no excuse
for Tesla not being able to reach the same minimal quality bar.

~~~
Veedrac
That seems like a reasonable excuse to me. Tesla's only been doing high volume
manufacturing for 8 years, and these things take time to build up expertise
for. If you buy a Tesla today you should expect you're trading off some fit
and finish for their advantages.

~~~
thrill
No, that sort of continued excusing of the manufacturer is why Tesla, after 8
years of production no less, continues to deliver substandard quality. What
pressure is there for them to do otherwise? Tesla accepts this, their
customers, only occasionally grumbling, accept this, and their die hard fans
go to the mat on social media to insure everyone else accepts this.

~~~
Veedrac
It seems very strange to claim that Tesla's sales aren't impacted by their
lackluster fit and finish. I only vaguely follow Tesla news and I've heard
this complaint a lot.

Even if this were the case, that prospective consumers _didn 't_ care about
paint quality and panel fit... then what's the problem? Why should Tesla focus
on a problem you say nobody cares enough to buy a different car over?

------
kwhitefoot
This is not news. Every Tesla owner knows that if they spent the same amount
of money on a Mercedes or even better a Volkswagen that they would get better
finish.

But quality isn't just about finish. It's about having the features you want:
mind bending acceleration in what is essentially a family or executive car, a
good electric car before anyone else had one, a better driver assistance
package, a simpler ordering process, a service organization that comes to you
to fix things, a user interface built for this century not the one before, a
charging infrastructure that not only works but is nearly ubiquitous.

The old car companies could have done all those things but they chose to
protect their existing product lines instead.

When they finally get their act together then Tesla will have a hard time,
until then, I'll stick with my five year old Model S and to hell with the fact
that the finish isn't quite as good as a Mercedes E class.

~~~
milkytron
> a service organization that comes to you to fix things

Even if they come to you to service your car, aren't there still issues with
actually getting fixes in a timely manner? I recall reading about customers
who needed replacement parts and having to wait weeks/months to get it fixed.

~~~
kwhitefoot
Yes, it sometimes is a a problem. I have had two mobile service visits. One to
replace the 12 V battery that was done under warranty and happened quite
quickly and on time; another to replace a smashed door mirror that was delayed
by a week because of a mistake in their internal processes.

The biggest problem I have with Tesla (the company not the car) is that they
are very bad at communication. Unlike the supercharger network, which is very
nearly ubiquitous in northern Europe, their telephone service is almost
impossible to use because it is simply permanently overloaded. This is a major
problem if you are trying to call them from a mobile phone in an area with
poor coverage such as when one has blown out a tyre by hitting a pothole on a
rural road in north Devon in the pouring rain.

------
tomalpha
> Tesla isn’t officially part of the study because it doesn’t allow J.D. Power
> access to customer vehicle registration data.

Interesting quote. Does that mean if I buy a non-Tesla car in the US, that my
personal details automatically get passed on?

I'm not always a Tesla fan, and you could always claim this is because 'they
have something to hide', but I very much like the sound of it from a privacy
perspective.

~~~
ponker
There’s a company called RL Polk that Hoovers up basically everything you
could imagine about car sales and resells that information for very high
prices. Don’t know where they get their data but they have a row of data for
each car sold.

~~~
dillonmckay
I would guess vehicle registrations is where they are obtaining the data from.

~~~
jeegsy
Is the government allowed to sell that data?

~~~
dillonmckay
There were quite a few articles. I believe maybe half of US states sell
driver’s license data, including photos.

[https://www.newsweek.com/dmv-drivers-license-data-
database-i...](https://www.newsweek.com/dmv-drivers-license-data-database-
integrity-department-motor-vehicles-1458141)

------
safgasCVS
Having priced warranty insurance products in the past, the relative cost of
repairs standardised by new vehicle value at the time of sale, JD power ranks
were not bad proxies but bit and miss for their mid-field. Toyota being below
average in reliability? Not in warranty claims it isn’t. Porsche usually does
well on JD power but their actual warranty bills (again, standardised for
their price) are very high. JD is mostly based oN subjective impressions and
electrical niggles in the first 90 days of ownership (niggles including
difficulty of operation not necessarily failures). If they have changed the
method since I last checked my apologies for spouting nonsense

------
kleiba
As far as I remember, this was already stated in early assessments by European
car manufacturers about Tesla, too. But then again, there is an obvious bias
why such statements would come from the competition.

~~~
krona
No bias required; you can eye-ball a Tesla and immediately see the panel
fitting and paint defect tolerances are much higher than say a Jaguar/BMW (for
the panels) or a Toyota (the paint).

These are the defects that consumers seem to be complaining about.

~~~
thePunisher
The paint especially is horrible. When it's brand new if compares unfavorably
with a 30-year Toyota.

------
Ice_cream_suit
J.D Power Initial Quality Study (warning !!! PDF ):
[https://www.jdpower.com/sites/default/files/file/2020-06/202...](https://www.jdpower.com/sites/default/files/file/2020-06/2020070%20U.S.%20IQS.pdf)

J.D Power press release : [https://www.jdpower.com/business/press-
releases/2020-initial...](https://www.jdpower.com/business/press-
releases/2020-initial-quality-study-iqs)

~~~
berkes
Off topic: but why do we always warn for PDFs? It's not as if they contain
malware, crash phones or freeze your OS, is it?

I too add a "PDF Warning" to links most of the times, but have no idea why I
should continue doing it, now that I think about it.

~~~
thecopy
I like PDF. They contain no ads, no javascript and no scroll-highjacking. I
know what to expect and it 'just works'.

~~~
Accacin
I thought that PDFs could contain JavaScript too!

~~~
Tepix
They can but viewers don‘t execute them with very few exceptions (and even
Adobe Reader has it disabled by default i think)

~~~
Cu3PO42
Chrome does and it may be one of the most popular viewers currently in use. If
you've never seen it, I encourage everyone to try breakout.pdf [0]. I know it
doesn't work in Firefox's viewer, but it does in Chrome's. And yes, it's
exactly what it sounds like: an implementation of the classic Breakout game in
PDF.

[0] [https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/gh/osnr/horrifying-pdf-
experiments@...](https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/gh/osnr/horrifying-pdf-
experiments@master/breakout.pdf)

------
01100011
> The top-rated brands were Dodge and Kia

Is it possible that owners of certain brands are less likely to notice certain
classes of car problems? For example, are people who purchase Kias less likely
to care about a squeaking seatbelt?

If I buy a car that costs $70k, I'm going to complain about every minor
defect.

~~~
KaiserPro
Whilst that might apply in some cases, I don't think its universal.

my 2009 kia rio has a superior paint finish, and more consistency in fit for
doors and windows compared to a showroom tesla. This genuinely surprised me. I
wish I had taken some photos to prove my point, because without it its all
going to be put down to subjectiveness.

The Kia rio has "generous" gaps around doors, boots and bonnets. However they
all have consistent distances, its not like one door sits higher than the
other.

The showroom model 3 had one door higher than the other. The weather seals are
going to be asked to do a lot there.

Then there is the paint job.

In the showroom all the model exhibited paint issues. Stuff like uneven
coating, or incorrect ratios of pigment/mica to binder, so that where there
are sharp corners there is bunching, lumps or roughness.

So yeah, whilst I agree, people who own low end models are going to complain
less, having seen (and wanted to buy) a tesla, I'm not surprised that fit and
finish is such a problem.

------
julianlam
Isn't this what a pre-delivery inspection is for? Most days the only time I
hear about PDI is when people advise other people to try and get their PDI fee
waived, because it's literally the salesperson checking boxes on a clipboard.

> “Unlike other manufacturers, Tesla doesn’t grant us permission to survey its
> owners in 15 states where it is required,” Doug Betts, president of the
> automotive division at J.D. Power, said in a statement. “However, we were
> able to collect a large enough sample of surveys from owners in the other 35
> states and, from that base, we calculated Tesla’s score.”

... and we're letting Tesla do this exactly... why?

------
oehtXRwMkIs
Is J.D. Power even trustworthy? I remember doubting them ever since Chevrolet
starting spamming all their J.D. Power awards ads with "real people".

~~~
dchest
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSBsq6HBBzw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSBsq6HBBzw)

------
thdrdt
Direct link to the 2020 Initial Quality Study page:
[https://www.jdpower.com/business/press-
releases/2020-initial...](https://www.jdpower.com/business/press-
releases/2020-initial-quality-study-iqs)

------
beyondcompute
“When surveying computing device owners we found that an average abacus user
reports 14 problems in the first three months and a laptop user reports 18”.

------
renewiltord
Is J D Power a real company? I just assumed they were some made-up bullshit. I
don't think I've ever believed they were worth anything.

