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Tesla Bombs in Its First J.D. Power Quality Study

For the first time ever, J.D. Power has included Tesla in its annual Initial Quality Study, which is now at its 34th edition. And Tesla absolutely bombed.
Tesla profiled for J.D. Power quality study, bombs hard 23 photos
Photo: Tesla
J.D. Power 2020 IQS findingsTesla profiled for the first time by J.D. Power, comes up short
An industry benchmark for quality issues, the IQS comes to reveal problems experienced by new owners of model-year vehicles from a variety of manufacturers. It’s a survey that focuses on imperfections, flaws, feature problems and unmet expectations new owners come across within 90 days of buying or leasing a new car for the model year.

This year is the first time that J.D. Power included Tesla in the study, and it came at the bottom of the list. Ranking in the IQS is done through the metric PP100, which represents the number of key problems encountered in 100 vehicles. For Tesla, that would be 250 PP100, meaning 250 problems for ever 100 vehicles.

There are a couple of very important caveats with the findings of the IQS 2020, though. The first one, as Doug Betts, president of the automotive division at J.D. Power, explains, is that Tesla wasn’t officially ranked against other carmakers because the study in quality issues wasn’t as thorough for Tesla cars.

“Unlike other manufacturers, Tesla doesn’t grant us permission to survey its owners in 15 states where it is required,” Betts explains in a press release. “However, we were able to collect a large enough sample of surveys from owners in the other 35 states, and, from that base, we calculated Tesla’s score.”

Those 35 states didn’t include California, which is the state with the highest rate of EV adoption. In total, J.D. Power surveyed some 1,250 owners of Teslas, mostly of Model 3.

Another important note is that, unlike with other carmakers, quality issues with Tesla didn’t relate to the infotainment system or powertrain, but were rather of a more cosmetic nature: paint imperfections, squeaks and rattles and wind noise, body panels that don’t align properly, and trunks and hoods that are hard to open or close.

“These are primarily a result of factory quality. Also, in the area of electric vehicle issues, they do have complaints related to range lower than expected; range gauge is inaccurate,” Betts says.

With the other marques included in the study, one fourth of all the problems cited by the 87,000+ respondents included built-in voice recognition, touchscreens, Bluetooth connectivity, built-in navigation systems and Android Auto / Apple CarPlay connectivity.

J\.D\. Power 2020 IQS findings
Photo: J.D. Power
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About the author: Elena Gorgan
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Elena has been writing for a living since 2006 and, as a journalist, she has put her double major in English and Spanish to good use. She covers automotive and mobility topics like cars and bicycles, and she always knows the shows worth watching on Netflix and friends.
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