Featured Consumer Reports' Highest-Rated Car-Ever

Okay I get, but seriously if Tesla is the highest rated car ever, and the S model is the only car offered at this time, how come they are not considered the #1 brand as well?

 

Hill answered this in a reply to you about halfway through page three.
Following the link he provided, it appears that the companies with the largest market share were rated, and all the smaller market share holders were aggregated into a single value from which individual companies could not be singled out.

This is quoted from the notes on that page:
"The "All Others" score for an industry represents the remainder of the total industry market share, less the market shares of the ACSI-measured companies. It is an aggregate of a representative number of customer interviews from each of potentially hundreds of smaller companies within the industry. Individual company scores within the "All Others" category cannot be derived without additional data collection (see "ACSI Products and Services," or to generate your own ACSI score using the ACSI methodology, see "ACSI MonitorSM")."

 

That is for ACSI! What about Consumer Reports? These are to separate organizations........

 

I like the car a lot, and Tesla made BEV shine, but to be honest, how can Consumer Reports rate/rank Model S so high when True Delta Reliability Records show a very high repair rate for this model?

 

• Consumer Reports ranks cars based upon the 'professional' staff. A staff which does not document how they generate their MPG numbers (except for highway) nor the weighting for the various metrics, ranked 1-5. Their hubris is writing periodic articles complaining about EPA numbers without being open about their own methods.
• Once a year, Consumer Reports sends a survey to owners asking about repair history and their opinions of the car. Otherwise, they only report on the model they bought.

Bob Wilson

 

The obvious answer is reliability is not rated all that high in their calculations, or they only consider the specific reliability of the individual car they are testing, or they don't use True Delta's ratings.
To get the answer to your question you should ask CR.

It very well could be the exact same reasoning.
That there is some market share, or number of models made threshold that Tesla hasn't yet reached.

 

I did some more digging for you.
Here is a video discussing their P85D rating. How Did Consumer Reports Score the Tesla Model S P85D? - Consumer Reports
They don't give the formula for their rating system, but the talk about the rational about how they score cars.

In short...
Yes, they took into account the reliability of the car (The Model S scored Average).
A big part of the positive scoring was because the Tesla does so many things so very well.
For example, there are faster accelerating cars out there, but none that are so good at performance & drive quality & passenger space & efficiency & etc etc.

They address the drawbacks (price, trips not along supercharger routes).

Overall, it was a very good video, even if I disagree with parts of it.
One of the three said, if they had the money, they would buy a P85D. The other two chose other cars.

It's about 30 minutes, but well worth it.

 

The car didn't reach 100%.
Yes, the rating Max is 100, but not a percent.
The door handle issues are disappearing. Tesla learned, adjusted, redesigned and started replacing ones that didn't work with the improved design.
While it still happens, it is happening less and less frequently.

 

I understand there are different ways of rating.
But from my POV, there is nothing obvious in "Consumer Reports" diverting from reliability data.

In True Delta, from a significant number of users (size of data) info, Model S has the highest repair rate.
Example...Of the 56 users/owners of MY2013, 31 reported a total of 68 repairs, 55%.
The same model does (cannot) not perform differently under other investigation/studies, it seems to me CR has absolutely no info whatsoever regarding this subject. All repairs may have been under warranty, for sure, but reliability stands for failures/repairs/trips which this car is showing very prone to.

 

True delta's reliability is almost always going to find a car that is low performance and non-innovative. If its a lemon, needing many repairs a year, its not going to be a highly rated car. If the reliability is good enough, as is the case with tesla, where true delta reports that most problems are minor, and drivers are highly satisfied, then its not a big item in a car review. I pulled it up and the model s averaged on true delta 1.2 repairs a year (I'm sure these are covered under warranty and some where over the air firmware upgrades). That isn't going to rank high when they are really looking at cars from the first model year, I'm sure the 2015s have improvements in reliability as tesla fixes manufacturing as they find problems continuously improving the car.

Good car bad car just added tesla to their statistics. The company was very small in 2014. In 2015 with 50,000 cars world wide and only one model, I doubt it will be included in ranks still. Look to maybe 2017 when they sell 35,000 cars in the US, and have 2 models, for them to be included in brand reviews.

 

Thank you again Zythryn for the link.

@hill/AG - I wonder what is the typical age and knowledge of these buyers. For sure not middle age owners nor putting too much pressure on dependability...

As I always said, nothing against Tesla, just "metering" out what in fact is this car compared to others...

 

In 1970 I bought a new low volume model from a small dealership who sold other brands some of which had also brought out a new lower priced model the same year. I couldn't wait to get rid of the car (which was brilliant) just because the service staff wasn't trained or was unavailable and parts were seldom available. I sold the car 1 week before the 2 year warranty expired and after the car had been in for repairs at least 25 times, many for the same issues.

Lets watch how well Tesla will handle multiple models selling in larger volumes.

 

As for CR, a self selected sample justifying the wisdom of their purchase is always a potential problem when the ratings are for something a bit different. It's cool to laud Tesla (witness the business mags and TV shows covering Elon's every move) where it is OK to criticize a more main stream product like a Chevy or a Dodge.

In some circles it is called fanboy bias.

 

Here are some specific tesla demographics, and the general plug-in versus hybrid demographics.
How Elon Musk Plans To Sell Half A Million Teslas By The End Of Next Year | TechCrunch
Electric-Car Buyers Younger And Richer Than Hybrid Owners

Model X should help on female demographics, model 3 should help lower the cost for moderate income people. It should stay in that ball park 36-55 year old home owner.

 

Which does not exist for the Prius product...

 

For these consumers, CR should have a "Geek Arquive". Ditching reliability sounds a Geek approach of a consumer analysis/appraisal.

 

No negativity meant towards the Tesla which i think is an excellent vehicle.

But I think Consumer Reports has suckered a lot of us into debate and attention through pretty obvious manipulation.
They "Know" what the Tesla is...and at this point, it's still a for most people, prohibitively expensive, and an alternative "niche" vehicle that most people will never own.

So it's a softball pitch, in the big leagues to make a headline proclaiming the Tesla "Breaks The Consumer Reports Rating System". Even then Consumer reports spends the first few paragraphs telling you while they've rated it the highest ever, they know it's not perfect, and then highlighting many of the drawbacks and hurdles still needing to be crossed by EV vehicle producers including Tesla.

So just like I roll my eyes when I think Consumer Reports is ridiculously negative in any review of The Prius c, I conversely take any unearthly lauding of The Tesla, at this point as nearly as unfounded. Consumer Reports seems to like to choose what factors they WANT to give great credence to, in evaluation of any vehicle, and then rate a vehicle up or down, on what often is very subjective IMO criteria.

For example, they seem to hate The Prius c, because it reminds them of a Yaris. It's small and has an "Econo-Box" level of finish. So they don't give much credence to actual REAL PERSON affordability, gas mileage or many of the entertainment and technology feature of The Prius c.

Meanwhile, The Tesla, which IMO does NOT have much real person affordability (yet), they are going to rank insanely high, knowing that as a niche vehicle, their just isn't going to be a lot of owners out their to either support or question their review. They can say it's a great vehicle, they can say it's great to drive and well appointed...because it is, but it seems to me, ranking the HIGHEST EVER, given it's overall position in the automotive world at this time, is more an action of click bait manipulation.

Is it fair to rank the Tesla high, because if what they "speculate" it means about the "Automotive Future"?

The Smithsonian ran a whole piece on how The Tucker was the 1940's Automobile of The Future. But ultimately today? They get remembered best as Auto Museum oddities, and as part of an interesting movie. Still respected for what they represent, but never a commercial success.

Not saying this is the fate of Tesla. NOT....

But I am saying, just because a product seems to have a lot of what we speculate the future may hold in its DNA, doesn't guarantee it's place as a success. I would say this is true whether we are talking Tesla or Mirai.

Because which is the greater success? Producing a limited amount of high priced vehicles, currently only obtainable by a relatively small number of people, or producing a > $20,000 Prius c, which may only be a "Bridge Technology" vehicle, a compact, and not have all the cutting edge bells and whistles and appointments of a Tesla, but can be purchased and owned by nearly anyone with a modest income?

Which is to say? I'm taking Consumer Reports sudden delirious love for The Tesla, with a huge and cautious grain of salt. I think the key will be NOT that we are talking about THE Tesla today, but if we are talking about Tesla...the company in 10 years.