On Wednesday, JD Power just launched its 2020 Initial Quality Survey. Conducted annually for the past 34 years, the survey consults buyers of new cars for that model year to find out what problems, if any, they encountered in the early 90s. days. proprietary. Then, each brand is classified according to the number of problems it experienced per 100 vehicles (PP100).
2020 is the first year Tesla is included in the survey, and as readers of our recent history of Model Y problems might have guessed, things aren’t looking too good for the California-based electric car company. Meanwhile, things are looking pretty good for Dodge, who shares top spot with Kia.
According to the JD Power survey, Tesla’s initial quality score is 250 PP100, a feat that makes even Audi and Land Rover seem trustworthy in comparison. Although to be completely exact, Tesla is not officially in last place, because the brand will not allow JD Power to survey its customers in 15 states where OEM permission is apparently required. “However, we were able to collect a large enough sample of homeowner surveys in the other 35 states, and based on that, we calculated the Tesla score,” said Doug Betts, president of JD Power’s automotive division.
Good domestics, bad luxury cars?
JD Power
Things look better for the other national automakers. Dodge scored 136 PP100, matching Kia. Chevrolet and Ram are in third place overall, with 141 PP100, and Buick, GMC and Cadillac scored better than the industry average of 166 PP100. And the most reliable single MY2020 vehicle was the Chevrolet Sonic, which got 103 PP100.
By contrast, luxury imports fared poorly in this survey, which obtained responses from a total of 87,282 MY2020 vehicle buyers and tenants, conducted between February and May this year. Only Genesis (124 PP100), Lexus (152 PP100), and the aforementioned Cadillac (162 PP100) were better than average. Meanwhile, the last five (excluding Tesla) were Jaguar (190 PP100), Mercedes-Benz (202 PP100), Volvo (210 PP100), Audi (225 PP100) and Land Rover (228 PP100).
Still, an average of 1.66 new car problems across the industry seems pretty bad. But JD Power says it’s more of a feature of a redesigned survey this year, giving people a more granular way to report issues their new vehicle has experienced.
Now asking 223 questions, divided into nine categories: Info & Entertainment, Features, Controls & Displays, Exterior, Interior, Powertrain, Seats, Driving Experience, Weather, and Driving Assistance (New for 2020). Readers of Ars may not be surprised to find that the most problematic of these categories was infotainment, which accounted for almost a quarter of all problems. The main complaints here were voice recognition, Android Auto and Apple CarPlay connectivity, touchscreens, on-board navigation, and Bluetooth issues.
