re: JD Powers report is out and Tesla is dead last is problems reported by owners.

And this is EXACTLY what happens when you don’t have dealers.

Y’all won’t believe this, but manufacturers push the shite out of dealers to make sure it’s right. The market is highly competitive, independently owned dealerships live and die by reputation. It’s a race every day to NOT frick UP.

Tesla stores- not so much.

I knew Sergio Marchionne IRL. What you are seeing at Chrysler being on the top of the list is Marchionne’s legacy living on. My old boss was scared shitless every time we had a meeting with him that he was going to get fired. Marchionne demanded perfection.

It’s a trickle down world.

I don’t see Elon Musk firing a guy because he wore the wrong tie. Marchionne did once.

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How do these studies weigh the average “complaint”?

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You alluded to two issue that I would have touched on if I hadn't already typed a TL:DR post: severity and expectations.

CR reports weights the different issues and also gives a rundown of the most frequent pattern issues. Let's say a car shows a lot of initial quality issues most people would want to know it was unstable Bluetooth vs blown head gaskets due to poor machining of the head or block.

People buying cars like Audi, BMW, and Mercedes often have different expectations of quality. So an issue with a $16k Kia Rio might simply be accepted as part of the price point where it might go back to the dealership if the same issue cropped up on a $120k BWM M5 Comp.

As for Tesla they seem to be lower middle of the pack in terms of reliability. Which is to be expected given the nature of their manufacturing and the amount of new tech each successive model/generation has.

Telsa also has a different engineering ethos much different from other car manufacturers which excels in some ways and falls short in others particularly the basics of car production efficiency. Germans and Italians tend to produce elegant but difficult to manufacture solutions where the Japanese and Koreans design with engineering efficiency in mind for every part. This produces two different sorts of vehicles. Where the Germans or Italians might use a complex Hirth joint on a 2 piece shaft with inside interference fit for bearings on a shaft and require lots of effort to properly preload the bearings the Japanese might use a solid shaft with outside interference fit for the bearings. One may be overengineered and be a case study in engineering beauty the other is simple to manufacture, fit for purpose and be cheap and easy to maintain. Tesla tends to use the worst of both worlds. Tesla has neither the engineering and manufacturing prowess of the Germans or the engineering simplicity or manufacturing efficiency of the Japanese. They have more of the mish mash of the two often seen in the Big 3 along with very formidable price point pressure.

What Tesla has done is simply amazing but they still have a long way to go but the big manufacturers just keep giving them the time.

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And this is EXACTLY what happens when you don’t have dealers.

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Eh, I'd say this is what happens when when you apply the tech world mentality of pushing features to consumers ASAP and using their feedback to iterate and improve quickly. Tesla is a tech company that builds cars.

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it feels like lexus and toyota are stuck in 2010.

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Toyota is the anti-Tesla. Tesla adds tech before it's "ready" in order to develop it more quickly. Toyota waits a decade and then picks the tech that lasted the longest.

Oh thank gawd! Elon is a fraudster you know!

Wait til these Model 3 owners run out of warranty. They will be quick to trade it in.

Soooo... basically this chart is telling me that rich people fuss more?

High end car owners are far more nit picky than cheap car owners.

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This is for initial quality, which is a measure of build quality. I would expect Tesla to do very poorly there.

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Yep, that's definitely a known issue that they need to improve on.

I believe the Model Y has had similar complaints as well.

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Toyota and Lexus are getting dusted by the competition on features. There have been MASSIVE gains in car interiors in the last 5 or so years, but it feels like lexus and toyota are stuck in 2010.

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Toyota/Lexus and also Honda have made their reliability bones by only using mature technology in their cars. Unlike say the Mercedes S class which traditionally has been the place where road car tech has been debuted. Being behind the tech curve was acceptable when it produced unmatched reliability and durability but when their vehicles are beginning to be matched and beaten by others it takes the shine of them.

While Mazda has been doing extremely well the company that amazes me lately is Porsche. Nearly every car/SUV they produce is made to order with a bewildering number of options and many of them not just run of the mill options (part A or part B fitted) like carbon fiber air vents or aluminum pedals. The fact they have risen to the top of the CR brand ratings tells a serious story.