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Title bait; Watch the video, the problems are all minor issues that were fixed & the owner is given a replacement car while they're fixed.

• gamblor956 12y ago
  The point of the article was really that Consumer Reports will be releasing a new reliability report on the fall. The Tesla's reliability rating may or may not fall, depending on the survey results provided by actual owners. CR does not include its own experiences in the reliability report, though these experiences do factor into CR's ratings and recommendations.
  • drewg123 12y ago
    Does anybody know how much the severity of the problem factors into the ratings? When doing research for my last car (a prius), a lot of the prius owners claimed that a recent reliability drop in CR Prius ratings corresponded with Toyota introducing the "Entune" radio / app system. At least for me, I'm much less concerned about an app crashing than I am about the car leaving me stranded because of, say, a coolant leak.
    • bri3d 12y ago
      On the Consumer Reports survey, respondents are asked to self-report the perceived severity of a failure along with the amount of time they were left without the car. I'm not sure about the algorithm used to turn these inputs into the simplistic CR circle-ratings, but I suspect that safety and total-inoperability issues are weighted heavily. Regardless of how the results are compiled, it's obvious that cars which already have a perfect score are susceptible to "fall off" due to moderate annoyances.
• alistairSH 12y ago
  How is the charing port not opening a minor issue? Or, the door handles getting stuck. Both of those render the car inoperable. They got lucky in that the door handles were fixed with an OTA update. The port required a service appointment. Compared to my three cars (Lexus RX, Jeep Wrangler, VW GTI), the Model S sounds like a complete dud. Which is a shame because it's a sexy car and I'd love to own one someday.
  • kenrikm 12y ago
    I've had my share of issues on my Lexus is250 (radio knobs breaking, new valves because they stuck, rough idle when braking hard) - all were covered under warranty though which is the main point. Issues like this usually pop up early in a car's life, I think the more interesting what happens to the Model S at 100k, 200k, 300k etc.. long term is still a huge unknown.
    • virtue3 12y ago
      Luckily the mechanics of electric cars are _much_ simpler than internal composition engines. The idea of "drive it till the trans falls out" shouldn't exist here. It is mildly annoying that the entire thing is basically driven by a computer. Because we all know around here that code is 100% reliable and never goes wrong :/... (and by code I mean software switches for everything and no manual mechanisms... like a latch for the charge port, etc etc).
    • alistairSH 12y ago
      Oh, I've had issues with my cars. The Lexus required a new radio at 40k miles (warrantied). The GTI a new throttle sensor at 40k (warrantied) and SRS sensor at 50k (warrantied). But none of them caused the car to be undriveable. And all happened after several years of driving, not several months. Anyway, as I hinted at above, I'm hopeful Tesla is successful. I wanted a Roadster back in '08. I want an S now. And I'm sure when they release their 3-series competitor, it'll be on the short list to replace the Lexus.
  • jdmichal 12y ago
    Honestly, I'd be more worried about the fact that the center console screen going out is what completely prevented them from opening the charging point. So daily usage of the car is entirely reliant on a touch screen interface with no physical fallback at all? That's frightening to me.
    • Shivetya 12y ago
      my favorite example of taking the idea to far, having the moon roof controls there. I find the touch screen to be the obnoxious part of an otherwise very interesting car. Just because you can do something does not mean you should.