When it comes to electric vehicles (EVs), Tesla currently ranks at the top according to their owners in a previous JD Power study. But in the firm’s most recent auto inspection, it found the company’s cars may not be as dependable as they are well-liked.
Thursday, CNBC reported that a new JD Power study ranked Tesla 30th out of 33 brands in overall dependability, with Lexus, Porsche, and Kia landing the study’s first, second, and third spots.
In the study, JD Power investigated about 150 different models which included cars, SUVs, and trucks, as well as EVs and traditional gas cars alike.
The study surveyed over 33,251 owners of 2018 vehicle models. This is the first year that JD Power has included Tesla in the vehicle dependability study, though the ranking is still considered unofficial, since Tesla doesn’t grant JD Power permission to survey its owners in 15 states which require this study – including California, the vehicle brand’s home.
Still, JD Power’s study did include 756 Tesla owners from a total of 35 states, and the results are fairly telling. Tesla has had some major production and quality control issues, leaving many critics well-equipped to take jabs at the EV company.
Despite the JD Power assessment, Tesla’s vehicles are helping to ring in an era of the EV, and CEO Elon Musk has said before that scaling production is the most difficult part of what Tesla has done. While it doesn’t have a century of production experience like many legacy automakers, it does have the benefit of being the world’s most valuable automaker right now – and hopefully that’s enough to help them dial in production in the years to come.
