Tesla Motors took a huge hit Tuesday from its former friend Consumer Reports, but Elon Musk won't go without putting up a fight.
After Consumer Reports retracted its recommendation on the Tesla Model S following a less than stellar result on its reliability survey, Elon Musk responded to the criticism on Twitter. The tweets came after Tesla stock fell more than 10% Tuesday, though it has since recovered somewhat.
This past August, Consumer Reports scored the Tesla Model S P85D 103 on a 100-point system, forcing the organization to tweak its ratings system, giving the Model S a final score of 100 points. Those scores don't take into account reliability, so Consumer Reports initially gave the Model S an official recommendation based on its score, and the fact that Consumer Reports found Tesla to have average reliability in its 2014 survey.
For its 2015 survey, Consumer Reports found that Tesla had below average reliability, leading to Consumer Reports' retraction and the nosedive of Tesla stock. Last night, Tesla CEO Elon Musk cleared the air on Twitter.
Consumer Reports reliability survey includes a lot of early production cars. Already addressed in new cars.— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 21, 2015
Tesla gets top rating of any company in service. Most important, CR says 97% of owners expect their next car to be a Tesla (the acid test).— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 21, 2015
Consumer Report's survey includes the last three model years, so Musk is right in saying that many early Model S cars were included in the survey. Whether these problems are hardware or software related isn't clear, but that's an important distinction to make. Tesla is unique in its usage of over-the-air updates, which allows the company to upload software updates to the car without the need for dealer servicing. Software updates can take care of many bugs, but it's entirely possible that responders to Consumer Reports' survey didn't update their software.
Many of the complaints, however, are hardware issues like leaky trunks and wheel alignment issues.
So Elon's first tweet is correct, but it seems to gloss over the fact that Tesla scored higher the previous year, presumably with earlier builds of the Model S as part of the survey.
For the second tweet, Tesla is well known for its service. With many problems, Tesla sends out an employee, rather than force a customer to go to the dealer to have repairs done. Owner satisfaction -- or the question of "will your next car be a Tesla?" -- is significant at well, but it doesn't refute claims of unreliability.
Land Rover makes notoriously unreliable models, but its owner satisfaction levels are very high in similar surveys. The company has many repeat customers, in spite of claims of unreliability.
Tesla's Model S has a lot going for it, and that's not something Consumer Reports will deny, but it's a complex beast and its reliability scores seem to reflect that.