Tesla last on JD Power Initial Quality
 

LR second worst. Most of the fun cars seem to have done poorly.

https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/25/2...quality-survey

I think on surveys like this some of it is explained by the types of buyers. The brands w/ more enthusiastic customers score lower because those buyers are the ones more likely to be OCD, read all the issues on the forums, bring the car in for every issue. On the other end, brands that are a little more of an “appliance” with customers that just don’t care as much.

Of course some of it is true quality or also reflective of complexity of the cars and some just having more things that can go wrong.

This study seems a little unfair. What an Audi or Tesla owner might consider a defect might very well be something that a Dodge (first place!) owner couldn't care less about. And maybe never even paid attention to. Like:

How's that unfair?
The car's quality is how well it meets its buyers expectations - and those expectations are different depending on what car is being discussed.

I'd have a whole different set of expectations if I were buying a Yugo compared to that of a Mercedes.
Same between models of cars within one brand too - A Chevy Bolt buyer will have a whole different set of expectations than that of a Corvette or a 2500HD Silverado...

My nickel....

Those are things that most high volume manufacturers have figured out how to do consistently. Maybe not necessarily as well as we would like, but consistently. Teslas seem to have a lot of bugs compared to, say, BMW, Mercedes, Lexus, etc. Which is a pretty reasonable comparison. ZBB has a laundry list of delivery defects on his new Tesla, for example.

Then the brand whose buyers have the lowest expectations wins, irrespective of the actual quality/fit/finish of the car. Hey, what do you know... Dodge took first place! Go figure.

This isn't a measure of the "initial quality" of a car, but a measure of how much/little the car's owner cares about the smaller details. Maybe change the name of the award to JD Power Initial Owner OCD Level Award.

That's the nature of any survey. It's still a useful indicator to anyone referencing the data if they do so intelligently.

Perfect explanation.

The buyers of those high-end cars have a right to think that their car is going to be perfect because they’re paying for that

A bit OT, but that also gets people complaining with an expensive, souped up version of a less expensive car. "My $80k car shouldn't XYZ." The reality is that it was a $45k car with bolt-ons.

A few thoughts on this survey
1. The results of any quality survey seem to cause lots of consternation amongst fans of brands/models that do poorly. I think these surveys are useful to look at as a data point; but not a reason to buy or not buy a car (a perfectly executed turd is still a turd and similarly a car you love that has a few issues on delivery that eventually get resolved may turn into a keeper). There does seem to be a general correlation with how long a model has been out and how well it does on these surveys as well (or for a brand overall the average age of their fleet). That's nothing surprising; first year cars tend to have more issues.
2. I dont think its a surprise that Tesla did poorly. We have been hearing anecdotal evidence of various build quality issues for a long time. And its a consistent pattern. ZBB's post is just a recent example. I think build quality is an area where they are an outlier; even on the worst cars from traditional OEMS it's hard to find build quality defects. Knowing Land Rover always is last in most quality surveys I took a close look at the various models they had in the showroom when we got ours. The worst thing I could find was some slightly misaligned window trim on a Discovery Sport. I think for most cars, the majority of the issues reported on this survey come down to certain features being difficult to use, maybe some NVH complaints and various software glitches. On the flip side, build quality issues (paint excepted) are often the simplest and quickest things for dealers to address; you wont' even remember them a year into your ownerhsip.
3. Related to the point above, not all issues are created equal. Some of those issues might be design flaws that never get remedied while others might something very simple. Interesting to reference and maybe dig deeper on, but nothing to base a buying decision on. What JD Power really wants is to sell their data to manufacturers.
4. They changed the survey this year and added some questions; that may be why there was somewhat of a shakeup in the order as well as why the numbers all went up across the board.