Featured Consumer Reports' Highest-Rated Car-Ever

I really don't put much value in consumer reports. They seem to hate the prius c, and like a lot of cars better than the prius.

The best car should have assumed average reliability. Consumer reports seems to move the stock a lot. The recommendation moved it up, this reliability report moved it down. crazy.

 

Good article, although I'm a little curious about some of the issues they list.
The headline certainly doesn't tell the whole story, and I am happy to see they dug a bit deeper.

From the article linked...

 

I just completed my 2 week trip. The mini trips were:

Sanford NC to Beaufort SC (295 miles)

Beaufort to Jacksonville FL (176 miles)

Jacksonville FL to Tampa FL (199 miles)

Tampa FL to Orlando FL (85 miles)

Orlando FL to Savannah GA (280 miles)

Savannah GA to Sanford NC with a 193 mile 3 hour detour due to the 95 mile SC shutdown of I95 (total 380 miles)

Gas was $1.869 to $2.249.

At each stop, I probably put another 50 miles of local driving on the car.

During that time, I saw 1 charger in Savannah and there was a Nissan sitting next to it with a very perturbed owner yelling on the phone trying to figure out what was wrong and why his car wouldn't charge. Never did I see a charger of any sort at any of the motels we stayed at. Never at any of the fast food places we stopped at.

Given that I could make any of those mini trips in a 25MPG car without a fuel refill except when my bladder dictated, why would someone want to spend the $80-145k money on a Tesla as their plush trip car when a $40k car was more than adequate? I get it if your second or third car is some SUV or mini-van or MB E or S class for the long trips and you use the EV for the short trips but the economics and convenience arguments escape me for buying it as the expensive car in the stable.

I get the green arguments.

In ten years when every motel and restaurant has multiple chargers ...

 

Here is your supercharger map of florida today. Easy to find easy to fill on those trips.

Tesla Store, Service Centers and Chargers

With 240 miles of range on the smaller battery ($75K before tax credit tesla s70d) most of those trips would require 0 or 1 charge, 2 trips require 2 charges if you don't stay where there is an outlet. lots of hotels in orlando and tampa with chargers, Some of those other cities might be tough.

People buy their plug-in for the daily drive, and normally aren't concerned about using it on the longer trips. It is definitely very easy to do your outlined trips in a tesla. If you have never considered a sports sedan, then I doubt you will want to pay for a tesla, but there does seem to be quite a large market for sports sedan, its probably bigger than the market for prii in the US No one buys a tesla to save money, but there will be some that buy a volt or bolt or leaf for that reason.

Tesla owners are a strange demographic, but they seem much more satisfied with the car than the toyota, lexus, bmw, mercedes, etc they upgraded from . Sometimes the cheapest way is not the best. With low low gas prices hybrid sales are falling in the US. Toyota only sees slow growth in the next 5 years in spite of more models. Tesla hits an area of the market that toyota and lexus hybrids just can not compete in.

 

Your area of the country has lots of Superchargers, as already mentioned.
Here is a map of destination chargers available: Destination Charging | Tesla Motors

Again, quite a few in your area, however, I don't blame you for not seeing them.
They don't stick out like gas stations. Most hotels don't advertise them and they typically are tucked away in a parking lot.

I'm not suggesting you should drive something else.
I am suggesting the availability is much greater than you are aware.

 

See any H2 stations? (I couldn't help myself. Sorry.)

 

need more nuke plants. or fracking.

 

30,000 deposits for single model X, but they will only make 20,000 in the year ('till the end of september 2016), parts need to be supplied. No fear, 2016 calendar year looks to grow S + X 50% to 75,000. Toyota will have multiple fcv selling 2000, 3000, 3000, 3000, 30,000, 30,000 or 71,000 toyota fuel cells promised around 2016-2021 (6 Years). I expect that that goal will be easier for tesla to hit. Maybe in 2035 toyota will get fcv sales to tesla levels.

 

So more efficient transportation results in more fossil fuel consumption? Here is something to consider. My summer air conditioning consumption use the same amount of energy as driving a Leaf 180 miles a day. My daily mileage is close to 40 miles per day. The additional electric consumption of most EV drivers is less than 1/4 of what my air conditioner takes.

 

Out of curiosity, I looked at the map. I expended every area I was passing by or stopping. Looked at destination chargers as well as superchargers. None of the chargers were on my routes (defined as within a half mile of the route I was taking (or forced to take because of the floods)). Look at Kissimmee, Duneaden, Savannah, Jacksonville, Beaufort (my hotel/motel/rental-house stops).

Yes there were chargers available but not at any of the overnight motel stops which tended to be in the city center, on the water, in the historic district.
And the ones I saw on the map had nowhere near the 8 to 14 nozzles the typical gas station has. I tend to stop at whim and have enough trouble navigating via GPS to my destination without having to program in some intermediate stop that may be miles out of the way.

So the expensive car that is the Tesla would turn out to be inconvenient for that kind of trip for me. I'll grant for only about 3 or 4 trips a year and the rest of the time it would be superior.

I have a golf cart recharging in my garage as we speak and I'm no stranger to higher end cars, 2 of my last three were in the Tesla's price range. I tend to be an early adapter (brought voicemail, email, office suite, desktop computing from outside into my company, for example) and actually looked at the Tesla as it would be fun to be different. But if I had one, I'd have to have (or rent) something pretty much the same size for my wife and for these trips and I'd rather have two vehicles which serve differing functions.

I respect anyone who makes a contrary decision, just wanted to point out how it didn't fit for me.

 

+1

Yep, and for many that inconvenience on trips wouldn't matter because they would be taking a trip with someone with another car, or the convenience of not using gas stations for most of the year, would make up for it. The network is fairly new, and won't be complete for anouther 2 years, then as needs come up they will build more. Marriott is slowly adding chargers to their hotels, and Starwood's Element hotels all have them, but this is not going to be a universal hotel feature.

The newess and FUD about plug-ins is a hurdle as is the high cost of these cars. In the next decade, I expect price to go down quite a bit for a 200+ bev, and selection to go up, and people seeing friends and neighbors with these cars will combat the fud.

+1

No problem, I think the first goal is 15%. There is no reason for every body to adopt at this early stage. 15% plug-ins will mean 2.5 million cars in the US a year if 17 million are sold. That will be plenty to drop battery prices and build infrastructure. I wouldn't expect that until 2026 ;-) The grid should be much cleaner then and gas prices higher. Then adoption to go from 15% to 59% may be quick. Or maybe there is plenty of oil, and global warming is no longer a problem a decade from now, and plug-ins stay a small percentage.

 

You conveniently left-out a key bit: Consumer Reports gave the car a "Not Recommended" final rating (put in bold so everyone sees it). The reason is far below-average reliability (minus 43).

LOL! Why are you so anti-Toyota? I need to update my block list (kidding). ;-) :-D

First every hotel has a charger: 120 volts. It's slow but overnight upto 100 miles are added to your tesla (can't do that with a hydrogen fool cell car). Second if we follow your logic to its conclusion (don't buy Tesla; travel the cheapest way possible) then you'd have taken a $12,000 Nissan Versa or Ford Fiesta on your journey. However you made a conscious decision not to buy an econobox, and instead get a $40,000 car. Similarly some owners have decided to buy a BMW or Mercedes or Tesla.

ALSO you forgot the free electricity Tesla is giving-away at its superchargers. I drive past one every day. It adds-up to $30,000 of free fuel, which is savings you can subtract off the pricetag (70k-30k == 40,000 actual cost).

 

i stayed at the lexington hotel in manhattan last week, no charger. 400 mile trip in the hycam, 45 mpg calculated, impossible in a tesla.

 

You got to really give consumer reports not Lexus a negative on this bit of hack work.

At the time Consumer reports reported that the model S broke the scale and had to rewrite it, they gave the model S the most recomended rating. Then people criticised Consumer reports, and it gets another headline for not recommended for tesla.

All the while all the reliability data was out there. There was a pumping of unreliable of short sellers of tesla that had lost a bunch of money to talk the stock down. Tesla confronted this with high owner satisfaction and fixing problems quickly. Consumer reports first report centered on that, great customer service and happy customers, this pumped the stock price up. The second report pumped it down. The net for tesla stock is a negative. The net on tesla sales and owner satisfaction is a who cares. This is just like consumer reports uninformed opinion on not recommending the prius c/aqua, which is now the best selling car in Japan.

Consumer reports gets in the news twice for publishing two sensational stories. I guess in an era of yelp and facebook, it needs stories on tesla to try and gain relevance. As to the mean of both stories, I would say both are exaggerated in opposite directions. Tesla's quality, reliability and customer service set new standards for a new auto company. The ability to improve software over the air without dealing with a dealer is truely a step forward. Still its a new design. If you want same old reliability in the class the Lexus LS has been stable since 2006, and all the kinks are long since worked out. The Lexus GS is newer than model S, but is similar to the 3rd generation. Time will tell if a new model S or GS is more reliable.

Problems from introduction, fixed in redesign

Front battery protection
Door handles
Transaxle
Motor

It will be interesting to see the 70 and 90 series which are newer, have fewer problems. We should know in a couple of years.

You want falcon wing doors, model X will probably have some problems from the history. Then again Tesla will fix them to owners satisfaction. If you want falcon wing doors on a great handling 7 passenger vehicle you only have one choice.

 

Impossible??
I don't think so, Manhattan has lots of 40Amp Tesla chargers. Some at parking ramps, some at hotels.
The route from Boston to New York City also has plenty of superchargers.

Can you find a hotel that doesn't have a charger? Sure, but that doesn't mean the trip is, in general, impossible.

 

i knew you'd be along z. when was the last time you stayed in manhattan?

 

The network is defined as "Your Tesla will be within 200 miles of any supercharger," which you are. It helps if you actually READ the information at tesla.com. Plus there are standard 240 and 480 volt chargers scattered in all major cities (see plugsharge.com). And your home has charging so you can drive to the mall & back without ever needing to plugin. I have a hydrogen car, and the refuel time is 4 minutes/kilogram. The Toyota Mirai holds over 5 kilograms, so over 20 minutes. That means hydrogen is four times slower than a gasoline fill.

As the British would say: Bollucks! When you stayed in he hotel, did it have a TV? Of course! It was plugged into the 120 volt. Where did you recharge your laptop and cellphone? In the 120 volt outlet. Where do you recharge your EV? In the 120 volt outlet. Good lord why do people not THINK or at least LOOK around and see? You are surrounded by outlets just waiting to charge your electric car. (1) Drive into your motel. Pay the bill. (2) Plug in your laptop, cellphone, and car for overnight charging. (3) Wake-up the next morning and find your laptop & phone are fully charged, and your Tesla has upto 100 miles added to the battery.

- Attendants cost $20/hour including benefits, insurance, etc. There is no reason for tesla to hire one at the station, just as Google does not need an attendant for their self-driving taxis. The computer does the work & it costs nothing per hour.

- Yes you can do a 400 mile trip in a Tesla. You leave home, stop at 250 miles for a 20-minute recharge/grab something to eat/take a pee. And then your battery will have 200 miles, so you can continue your trip until you reach your destination (easily). On youtube there's a guy who uses his Tesla for making deliveries (cats, dogs, other fragile items)! He drives upto 1 thousand miles a day using superchargers.
.

 

huh? have you ever been to manhattan? it's not debuque, you don't park at the hotel, with an outlet near your car. if you can bring it up the elevator tour your room though, you can plug it in with your phone and laptop.