> Notably, the report identified lighting, brakes, and axles as prominent sources of faults in the Tesla Model 3.
I would have thought the battery or the powertrain or some EV-specific component would be the source of the problems. Does anybody know why these more seemingly standardized parts are failing at higher rates?
The comparison is between old car manufacturers who have been perfecting building standardized parts for 10s of years, and between tesla who is still figuring that part out too.
Both VW and Tesla have been making EV-specific components for about the same amount of time (not long), but VW has something like 70 years more experience than Tesla in making brakes (edit: integrating brakes into cars, fine)
VW specs brakes that are built by companies (e.g. ATE/Teves, Girling, Brembo) with those 70 years of experience. Tesla, famously, brought all sorts of complex assemblies (e.g. seats) in house. So I'm curious with the situation is with the Model Three.
I can sorta understand wanting to bring something bespoke like seats in house, but friction brakes are commodity hardware. If Tesla is trying to DIY friction brakes that seems like a colossal waste of time.
Tesla puts a lot of effort into battery and powertrain reliability but relatively little effort into more visible things such as panel gaps, lights, interior trim, etc.
The panel gap meme is a myth - I've gone through quite a few Tesla's and none of them have had these 'huge' panel gaps that are rumored to exist. Not to mention all of my friends' Tesla cars do not have panel gaps either.
These parts are not part of the check. Only the safety and environment relevant things are checked. So, to say it a little ironicly, when your car have no motor, this is ok, as long the break is working correctly.
In Germany all cars have to be checked by an independent authority for road safety every two years. TÜV is the best known one, but there are others like Dekra.
It's a standardized test. If your car fails you have a few weeks to get it fixed and present your car again.
So you have dozens of millions of cars being checked every year by standardized criteria. That gives extremely reliable statistics.
I am frankly amazed at the amount of Tesla's in my corner of Europe. There is only one Tesla service center and it has a backlog of months.
The cars are really not that reliable and if you get in a fender bender no regular body shop can help you. If worse you are likely completely fucked with costs going into the many thousands very quickly. Not to mention waiting for months on repair.
Also the resell value after a few years is awful. The most popular reseller site has so so many available.
Tesla's in my opinion are a luxury vehicle but unlike other car luxury vehicles. They are a luxury because they are like a smart phone. Once it is too old or broken, you throw it away and the money is gone entirely.
When you say they aren't reliable, what do you mean? I've had a few things break, like a seat weight sensor and a side camera over a few years but I would call the core car itself very reliable.
Before $7500 rebate which is the real used market killer
I check all the time and the used market (on 3 and Y) isn't nearly cheap enough to opt out of a brand new model with full warranty
And because of the reliability issues, the full warranty is quite valuable (in the short term at least)
-- my 2015 S battery dies literally the day after the 8y warranty ended. $15k to replace with a refurbished battery AND forfeit my battery to them to resell it. The trade in value of the car, assuming it worked, was only $20k.
Not sure this is that the parent meant, but with Tesla’s price drops, Hertz said they had to depreciate them faster. [1]
If you buy at $50k and the next week they more sell for $40k Tesla, you’ve lost money. And Tesla has had multiple price drops.
1. Hertz’s Tesla fleet certainly is not used solely for Uber. In some areas they are popular for regular car rentals. I know, because I’ve gotten them when renting cars on trips with Hertz.
2. Hertz’s issue is that they bought (some of) their Teslas and then Tesla dropped the price of new vehicles significantly. So even if Hertz never rented them out and had them in a showroom, they already have lost money on resale value.
This isn't exactly a new claim, and it's backed up by Tesla's own claimed strategy of vertical integration.
Many of the sensors in a $200,000 Maybach and a $20,000 Civic all come from the same battle tested catalogues from a few companies (like Bosch, Continental, etc.)
Tesla prides themselves on replacing those battle tested components with in-house alternatives with no where near the widespread applications or history to shake out bugs in order to save themselves some money.
I'm not sure why people think the EV part is what makes Tesla's margins when we've commoditized ICEs to the moon and back: it's the making a cheaper car part that does. You don't get to do that for free.
...silently replacing the CPO program with a used program and shipping out cars with toenail clippings, launching AP2 with less reliability than AP1 because Mobileye fired them as a customer, shipping non-automotive grade screens that started leaking in cars...
Yeah there's a laundry list but in my experience the people who comment like what I replied to will have excuses for all that
The only technique that ever gets some semblance of acceptance is using Tesla's own claims as proof (since everything else is an anti-Elon conspiracy theory)
To explain, the TÜV in germany checks every two years all cars for safety relevant issues and without to pass this check you can't use your car until the issues are fixed. So, this report is about every second Tesla 3 that drives on german roads. Not just one batch, not only some hundred ones, not some special ones, EVERY SECOND MODEL 3 that is rolling on the roads in Germany.
I hear only but good reports from people that are iphone fans. Thats normal, no one want to admit himself that he have done not a good deal.
Joking aside could there be a difference in the German Tesla factories vs. other countries? I'm digging into knitty-gritty, but maybe because it just doesn't match real life reviews.
I can only speak for myself, but I have two Teslas and I'll never go back to another car after this point unless it's substantially better. I don't have any issues with mine and the speed and technology never gets old. Daily driving a car that beats super cars in 0-60, the quarter mile and tops out at 200 mph is a pretty awesome experience (and combined with the self driving, audio system, and giant screen with maps, and a GPU that plays Steam games).
TUV is amazing, ive used it for years to buy every car. Check this out:
1) List the cars in the oldest category (12+ years from memory)
2) Find the most reliable which is a car which meets your needs
3) buy 12+ year old car for $2-3k
4) enjoy reliable cheap motoring. I'm driving a 2005 mercedes right now which cost next to nothing, has done 200k+ miles and feels like it's brand new. Thanks TUV
6) Offset burned fossil fuels carbon by reusing already produced car instead of buying new
7) Do not care too much about burning fossil fuel just because rich hypocrites are trying to offload environmental responsibility to the most vulnerable ones
> Offset burned fossil fuels carbon by reusing already produced car instead of buying new
I'm not against you, but I disagree with this point. It's one that people often make, so I feel the need to comment:
Buying a new car doesn't add another car to the waste bin; buying a new car simply adds one more car to the pool of used cars, thus reducing the price of used cars by an infinitesimal amount, and simultaneously raising the price of new cars an infinitesimal amount. In either scenario the amount of waste is unchanged.
What does lead to more car waste is cheaper new cars, which reduces the value advantage of buying a used car; exactly what we see with consumer electronics. The answer to that problem is to make the cars themselves greener, electric being the best choice at the moment.
Teslas are so cool and so cheap that if my fails, i'll just buy another one. Also running costs are virtually zero. They also project image way way above their price.
You could argue that Teslas are owned by the least car centric people, which leads to them driving around with faulty cars until they go in for their every other year safety road test.
Compare that to van drivers or sports car owners or car veterans that are slow adopters, who might catch a cars problem earlier and get it fixed before a safety test. Heck, just the fact that regular cars go into mechanics to get services more regularly will lead to problems being caught before a safety test.
This doesn't really say that Teslas have more problems, more so that Teslas drive around with problems for longer than other types of cArs.
People that work on their own cars, repair and modifying, are still very anti EV for the most part. Idk how to give you data on that, but if you're at all in the auto world this is painfully obvious. Outliers exist of course, but that's the case with everything.
Your point is 100% true, but I expect the impact on the data to be essentially none.
"car centric people" are not the average citizen. This data is on the scale of a country and the impact at this scale will be minimal.
> the report identified lighting, brakes, and axles as prominent sources of faults
Heavy powerful car is rough on the chassis and suspension. News at 11.
Basically Tesla made a sedan with insane torque using normal sedan parts, but it weighs more like an SUV because of the battery weight. They should've used reinforced parts, but that would've been more expensive.
Be aware that you should always take TUV reports with a grain of salt.
When I, as a Ford owner, need the bi-annual TUV inspection, I go to a Ford dealer to let them take care of it. They will pre-inspect the car for me (and usually I let them also do the annual maintenance at the same time), and they will fix any issues before the TUV inspector sees it. That's cheaper for me, because I don't have to pay TUV twice (even if the fee for re-inspections is lower), I always get my car back on the same day, and it's also much better for Ford, because the car won't show up in TUV reports.
Tesla doesn't have a dealership network like Ford or the other big brands. I guess most owners will just drive to the TUV station, without pre-inspection, and thus their cars will end up in the report.
For the same reason, value brands show up more often in the TUV reports. Their owners often don't go to dealerships and don't stick to the maintenance plan, but drive to TUV directly or go to smaller garages which don't do the pre-inspection.
> According to DIGITIMES, the high Tesla Model 3 fault rate can be attributed to Tesla’s decision to cease defining service intervals in 2019. The limited availability of Tesla service centers is another key factor.
> Although the TÜV SÜD report is specific to Germany, Tesla’s lack of service centers is a global problem. Tesla currently has 186 service centers in the US. By comparison, there are almost 3,000 Ford service centers.
Not really news. Tesla's are cheap cars with terrible quality that basically "everyone" owns, and similar cheap Chinese cars like Polestar also has a lot of problems.
Getting work done has always taken a long time too, and that has only changed in the last few months.
Am I alone to think it's kind of sad that they couldn't even bother to write TÜV properly?
I mean I know its not on your keyboards but you could've just googled it in like 2-3 seconds...
I would take this "report" with a whole bag of salt.
First, they are talking about a 221-car sample; that seems extremely low and looks like it has been cherry picked from among all the possibilities to make Tesla look as bad as possible.
Second, we are talking about Germany; a country that has a whole political arm related to building and selling car, in particular luxury, a segment where Tesla has been beating them in some factors recently. You can feel the bitterness through the screen.
Third, I would expect a 10-year-old car manufacturer with brand new tech to have reliability a bit worse than an established manufacturer with old proven tech. But they don't even talk about the real cost or total cost of ownership anyway, so it is like guessing and comparing.
And they tout WV as reliable, which is kind of funny as everyone who really has own a WV will tell you, especially after the cheating scandal. I guess they are reliable as long as you don't care about electronics... And the electric Golf they are mentioning is not even produced anymore. My father's partner had an e-UP and was extremely unhappy with it so...
It seems like classic Tesla hate and I don't even care because I think most people should not even get a car or that a car at those prices do not make sense. But if you are going to spend that much money on a car, Tesla is hardly the worst choice...
Looks like we read different reports.
Thats not 221-car sample, thats 221 vehicle models. Models, not cars.
> TUV SUD is a Germany-headquartered company offering testing and certification services. It did 10.2 million times of regular testing on 221 vehicle models between July 2022 and June 2023.
Ok that's my bad I read too fast.
Still, I would be interested in the distribution of the models. They may not have but lies via statistical manipulation are so prevalent that I assume it's at least half the answer in most cases.
The rest is still valid. There is such a strong irrational Tesla hate by many that it's hard to take "reports" seriously. I feel it is prevalent in the general public as well.
In fact, I feel the same hate people had for Apple right before and at the start of the iPod era. At that people were saying to me all kind of nonsense because I was using Apple products. Now Apple is most valuable company in the world so I'm laughing my ass off.
Even more hilariously, nowadays I believe they are abusing their reputation and unfairly milking people.
Careful what you wish for I guess...
Still there is a lot of shit-talk about Tesla and most of it is nonsense.
In particular I would ignore most of what come of out of Germany, they are scared shitless and clearly have a lot to gain by damaging Tesla reputation. I wish they would focus on producing better cars at cheaper price (when price matched, current German cars sort of suck compared to rest of the market but they won't let you tell that of course).
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 108 ms ] threadI would have thought the battery or the powertrain or some EV-specific component would be the source of the problems. Does anybody know why these more seemingly standardized parts are failing at higher rates?
Both VW and Tesla have been making EV-specific components for about the same amount of time (not long), but VW has something like 70 years more experience than Tesla in making brakes (edit: integrating brakes into cars, fine)
I'm sure you could have read "make" charitably as "making and/or integrating brakes into cars" if you wanted to.
I can sorta understand wanting to bring something bespoke like seats in house, but friction brakes are commodity hardware. If Tesla is trying to DIY friction brakes that seems like a colossal waste of time.
And assembling brakes
https://www.autoevolution.com/news/another-tesla-is-delivere...
I'd never experienced that before, or heard of others who had experienced it.
The closest to a source that I can find (and read) is: https://www.tuvsud.com/en-us/press-and-media/2023/november/r...
It's a standardized test. If your car fails you have a few weeks to get it fixed and present your car again.
So you have dozens of millions of cars being checked every year by standardized criteria. That gives extremely reliable statistics.
The cars are really not that reliable and if you get in a fender bender no regular body shop can help you. If worse you are likely completely fucked with costs going into the many thousands very quickly. Not to mention waiting for months on repair.
Also the resell value after a few years is awful. The most popular reseller site has so so many available.
Tesla's in my opinion are a luxury vehicle but unlike other car luxury vehicles. They are a luxury because they are like a smart phone. Once it is too old or broken, you throw it away and the money is gone entirely.
I check all the time and the used market (on 3 and Y) isn't nearly cheap enough to opt out of a brand new model with full warranty
And because of the reliability issues, the full warranty is quite valuable (in the short term at least)
-- my 2015 S battery dies literally the day after the 8y warranty ended. $15k to replace with a refurbished battery AND forfeit my battery to them to resell it. The trade in value of the car, assuming it worked, was only $20k.
1. https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2023/10/26/hertz-pulls-back-on-ev-p...
2. Hertz’s issue is that they bought (some of) their Teslas and then Tesla dropped the price of new vehicles significantly. So even if Hertz never rented them out and had them in a showroom, they already have lost money on resale value.
https://jalopnik.com/hertz-tesla-rental-fleet-costs-deprecia...
https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/collision-repair-tak...
https://www.teslaownersonline.com/threads/model-3-significan...
https://old.reddit.com/r/TeslaModel3/comments/vjd02j/tesla_s...
https://old.reddit.com/r/TeslaModelY/comments/13yks9p/frustr...
There's no info on the report and methodology.
I hear nothing but good reports from people who own these cars. And given the current media attack against Elon, I prefer to verify negative claims.
Many of the sensors in a $200,000 Maybach and a $20,000 Civic all come from the same battle tested catalogues from a few companies (like Bosch, Continental, etc.)
Tesla prides themselves on replacing those battle tested components with in-house alternatives with no where near the widespread applications or history to shake out bugs in order to save themselves some money.
I'm not sure why people think the EV part is what makes Tesla's margins when we've commoditized ICEs to the moon and back: it's the making a cheaper car part that does. You don't get to do that for free.
Yeah there's a laundry list but in my experience the people who comment like what I replied to will have excuses for all that
The only technique that ever gets some semblance of acceptance is using Tesla's own claims as proof (since everything else is an anti-Elon conspiracy theory)
I hear only but good reports from people that are iphone fans. Thats normal, no one want to admit himself that he have done not a good deal.
Joking aside could there be a difference in the German Tesla factories vs. other countries? I'm digging into knitty-gritty, but maybe because it just doesn't match real life reviews.
1) List the cars in the oldest category (12+ years from memory)
2) Find the most reliable which is a car which meets your needs
3) buy 12+ year old car for $2-3k
4) enjoy reliable cheap motoring. I'm driving a 2005 mercedes right now which cost next to nothing, has done 200k+ miles and feels like it's brand new. Thanks TUV
7) Do not care too much about burning fossil fuel just because rich hypocrites are trying to offload environmental responsibility to the most vulnerable ones
I'm not against you, but I disagree with this point. It's one that people often make, so I feel the need to comment:
Buying a new car doesn't add another car to the waste bin; buying a new car simply adds one more car to the pool of used cars, thus reducing the price of used cars by an infinitesimal amount, and simultaneously raising the price of new cars an infinitesimal amount. In either scenario the amount of waste is unchanged.
What does lead to more car waste is cheaper new cars, which reduces the value advantage of buying a used car; exactly what we see with consumer electronics. The answer to that problem is to make the cars themselves greener, electric being the best choice at the moment.
Compare that to van drivers or sports car owners or car veterans that are slow adopters, who might catch a cars problem earlier and get it fixed before a safety test. Heck, just the fact that regular cars go into mechanics to get services more regularly will lead to problems being caught before a safety test.
This doesn't really say that Teslas have more problems, more so that Teslas drive around with problems for longer than other types of cArs.
I’m interested in hearing more about that argument.
Tesla will sue people who tinker with their cars. Thats not exactly compatible with “car enthusiast“.
Heavy powerful car is rough on the chassis and suspension. News at 11.
Basically Tesla made a sedan with insane torque using normal sedan parts, but it weighs more like an SUV because of the battery weight. They should've used reinforced parts, but that would've been more expensive.
When I, as a Ford owner, need the bi-annual TUV inspection, I go to a Ford dealer to let them take care of it. They will pre-inspect the car for me (and usually I let them also do the annual maintenance at the same time), and they will fix any issues before the TUV inspector sees it. That's cheaper for me, because I don't have to pay TUV twice (even if the fee for re-inspections is lower), I always get my car back on the same day, and it's also much better for Ford, because the car won't show up in TUV reports.
Tesla doesn't have a dealership network like Ford or the other big brands. I guess most owners will just drive to the TUV station, without pre-inspection, and thus their cars will end up in the report.
For the same reason, value brands show up more often in the TUV reports. Their owners often don't go to dealerships and don't stick to the maintenance plan, but drive to TUV directly or go to smaller garages which don't do the pre-inspection.
> According to DIGITIMES, the high Tesla Model 3 fault rate can be attributed to Tesla’s decision to cease defining service intervals in 2019. The limited availability of Tesla service centers is another key factor.
> Although the TÜV SÜD report is specific to Germany, Tesla’s lack of service centers is a global problem. Tesla currently has 186 service centers in the US. By comparison, there are almost 3,000 Ford service centers.
Getting work done has always taken a long time too, and that has only changed in the last few months.
First, they are talking about a 221-car sample; that seems extremely low and looks like it has been cherry picked from among all the possibilities to make Tesla look as bad as possible. Second, we are talking about Germany; a country that has a whole political arm related to building and selling car, in particular luxury, a segment where Tesla has been beating them in some factors recently. You can feel the bitterness through the screen. Third, I would expect a 10-year-old car manufacturer with brand new tech to have reliability a bit worse than an established manufacturer with old proven tech. But they don't even talk about the real cost or total cost of ownership anyway, so it is like guessing and comparing.
And they tout WV as reliable, which is kind of funny as everyone who really has own a WV will tell you, especially after the cheating scandal. I guess they are reliable as long as you don't care about electronics... And the electric Golf they are mentioning is not even produced anymore. My father's partner had an e-UP and was extremely unhappy with it so...
It seems like classic Tesla hate and I don't even care because I think most people should not even get a car or that a car at those prices do not make sense. But if you are going to spend that much money on a car, Tesla is hardly the worst choice...
> TUV SUD is a Germany-headquartered company offering testing and certification services. It did 10.2 million times of regular testing on 221 vehicle models between July 2022 and June 2023.
The rest is still valid. There is such a strong irrational Tesla hate by many that it's hard to take "reports" seriously. I feel it is prevalent in the general public as well.
In fact, I feel the same hate people had for Apple right before and at the start of the iPod era. At that people were saying to me all kind of nonsense because I was using Apple products. Now Apple is most valuable company in the world so I'm laughing my ass off. Even more hilariously, nowadays I believe they are abusing their reputation and unfairly milking people. Careful what you wish for I guess...
Still there is a lot of shit-talk about Tesla and most of it is nonsense. In particular I would ignore most of what come of out of Germany, they are scared shitless and clearly have a lot to gain by damaging Tesla reputation. I wish they would focus on producing better cars at cheaper price (when price matched, current German cars sort of suck compared to rest of the market but they won't let you tell that of course).