Tesla Motors taken down a notch by Consumer Reports’ disrecommendation

My, how the mighty have fallen. Consumer Reports today announced it cannot Recommend the Tesla Model S, despite that car being so utterly excellent that it “broke” CR’s ratings system. That is, Consumer Reports twice did a review of the Tesla Model S which awarded the car the highest ranking of any car CR has ever tested. Twice. But, today the consumer products testing agency released a report ranking car “reliability” and, because of ongoing problems with the car, Consumer Reports cannot Recommend the Tesla Model S.

According to a posting on the Consumer Reports website: “To be recommended, a vehicle has to meet stringent testing, reliability, and safety standards, including having average or better predicted reliability.”

What does that mean in the case of the Tesla Model S? CR received input from a survey of 1,400 Model S owners, who told CR of a litany of problems. Drive motors that have to be replaced, battery systems that no longer charge, and door handles that don’t work properly. Or, as CR put it: “From that data we forecast that owning that Tesla is likely to involve a worse-than-average overall problem rate.”

The issues have gotten worse since CR’s 2014 car reliability survey, with the climate control, steering, and suspension systems scoring lower than in 2014.

Consumer Reports did say that most of the problems are covered under warranty, and are fixed at no charge to the car owner.

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About David Herron

David Herron is a writer and software engineer living in Silicon Valley. He primarily writes about electric vehicles, clean energy systems, climate change, peak oil and related issues. When not writing he indulges in software projects and is sometimes employed as a software engineer. David has written for sites like PlugInCars and TorqueNews, and worked for companies like Sun Microsystems and Yahoo.