Tesla moves up five ranks in CR's reliability survey
ConsumerReports
Consumer Reports released its annual reliability report, placing Tesla 19th out of 24 car brands. The publication continues to offer harsh reviews for Electric Vehicles placing the entire sector as the second least reliable choice for a vehicle, just ahead of full-size pickups. While this review certainly generated a lot of attention, it is entirely predictable.
Until recently, Tesla was practically the lone player in the EV space, and now automakers are rushing to get an electric car with their brand on the road as quickly as possible. But, of course, any product rushed to market will have issues, and a vehicle is a complex piece of technology and machinery that will show those issues 10-fold.
Big Drops By New EV Manufacturers
For example, Hyundai and Chevrolet, which have significantly pushed into the EV marketplace, dropped in year-over-year rankings. Chevrolet dropped ten spots, and its Volt is listed as the fifth least reliable car. At the same time, Hyundai's Kona comes in ninth. Mercedes Benz dropped to last place in reliability. Consumer Reports blames its drop on EV production as well. Ford is now ranked 18th, as many consumers reported issues with the Mustang Mach-E.
Jake Fisher, a senior director at Consumer Reports, told CNBC, "The automakers are using EVs as a technological testbed for whatever new technology they want to try out. By having all this new technology, there's a lot of potential problems with them."
Tesla Takes Unnecessary Criticism
Fisher's comment begs the question, why are full-size pickup trucks so unreliable? They've been around for a long time. However, the majority of media outlets are aimed at Tesla. Take Bloomberg as an example; it used Tesla in its headline despite their ranking actually improving and the company being ahead of five other brands when it comes to reliability, including Chevrolet (20), GMC (21), Volkswagen (22), Jeep (23), Mercedes-Benz (24).
Consumer Report collects data from consumers of more than 300,000 vehicles. There were 2,000 owners of Teslas included in the survey. Model 3 received an average reliability ranking, but Models S, X and Y ranked below average.
Hybrids Are Not the Answer
On the flip side, Fisher then promotes hybrids as the most reliable vehicles, "Today's hybrids are just as quiet and just as quick and nice to drive as the normal versions. The reliability of electric vehicles is not great. In fact, the majority are actually below average."
This comment is perplexing. EVs removed all of the components that can go wrong with ICE cars. Over the summer, Elon Musk tweeted, Time to move on from hybrid cars. That was a phase. That's a nicer way of saying what he's reportedly called hybrids in the past, "an amphibian in a transition from dinosaurs to mammals." Consumer Reports says that 1 in 3 consumers want a hybrid as their next vehicle.
While Tesla’s 2024 Holiday Update brought many new features, including Apple Watch Support, Cross Traffic Alerts, Weather Overlays, Search Along Route, and others, there are also several smaller items in this update that didn’t get much attention.
Ambient Lighting Now Affects Easter Eggs
The 2024+ Model 3 and Cybertruck both come equipped with ambient lighting, and Tesla is now taking advantage of this custom lighting feature by incorporating it into several easter eggs.
Rainbow Road: If you head over to Apps > ToyBox > Rainbow Road, you’ll find a new option available that allows the ambient lighting in the vehicle to also change shades while Rainbow Road is active. The Rainbow Road easter egg is a tribute to the iconic course course in Nintendo’s Mario Kart.
Check out the feature in action below:
🇮🇹 Con l’aggiornamento di Natale, quando attiviamo la pista arcobaleno, anche i LED interni diventeranno arcobaleno. Questa è una novità non documentata, scovata da un utente di TESLERS (chiaramente riguarda le Model 3 Highland)
Santa Mode: Just in time for Christmas, Tesla has improved Santa Mode by cycling the ambient lighting between Christmas colors. Similar to Rainbow Road, the use of ambient lighting for the easter egg is optional and can be enabled under Apps > ToyBox > Santa Mode.
When using Santa Mode with ambient lighting turned on, the lights will cycle just between Christmas colors, red, green and white, instead of the full rainbow. There’s a video of the feature below:
The Model S and Model X vehicles that support Steam gaming are receiving a Steam app update in the holiday update as well. This update could end up being very interesting, but for now Tesla says that the SteamOS, which also runs on Valve’s Steam Deck has been updated to version 3.6.
Valve outlines a wide range of fixes and improvements in their release notes for version 3.6, but Tesla simply states that the OS update includes performance enhancements and improved game compatibility.
The SteamOS hasn’t been updated on the Model S and X for quite a while, so we believe there may be more to this besides performance improvements and fixes. We’ll be looking to share some insights into this in the near future.
So, there you have it—three new features in the Holiday update that have mostly gone under the radar. While they may not apply to everyone, there are plenty of other cool features in the Holiday Update, like the arrival of Dynamic Road Closure Routing and Nearby Parking, that are coming to every vehicle, so go check out the full release notes.
At the 2023 Q3 Earnings Call, Tesla provided an update on its next-generation model, what many are referring to as the “Model 2” or “Model Q.” Although the actual model name is yet to be determined, it is known internally as Redwood.
During the 2024 Shareholder Meeting, Musk again mentioned the upcoming model, saying that Tesla is working on new products, including a more affordable vehicle and a larger SUV.
While we know the next-gen vehicle is aimed at the $25k to $30k USD market, we now have some new information thanks to a new report out of China.
Launch & Price
According to the Chinese outlet CNMO Technology News (Sina Finance), Travis Axelrod, Tesla’s Head of Investor Relations, announced plans to launch a new model. Axelrod shared this update while addressing senior corporate investors at an investor conference hosted by Deutsche Bank on December 5, 2024.
The goal of Project Redwood, internally dubbed “Model Q” by Deutsche Bank, is to achieve a post-subsidy price of under $30,000 USD. With the Federal EV Rebate potentially expiring next year, this suggests that the Model Q’s starting price will be around $30,000 USD. For comparison, the Model 3 currently starts at $42,490 in the U.S.
We previously reported that Tesla has already been speaking to suppliers and is looking to begin volume production of the vehicle sometime around June 2025. Of course, prototyping is still necessary, but we haven’t seen any signs of Tesla testing a new vehicle since spotting the Cybercab on the streets ahead of We, Robot.
Specs
The Model Q will supposedly be about 15% smaller and 30% lighter than the Model 3, with an approximate length of 3,988mm, or 157 inches. For scale, the Mini is 157 inches, while the Model 3 is 185 inches, so it’s fairly compact.
The battery will also be smaller to match the vehicle’s smaller size as Tesla tries to reduce the vehicle’s price while maintaining a similar range as its other vehicles. Tesla is expected to offer two models—a single-motor RWD model and a Long-Range Dual-Motor AWD variant.
The lower trim level will include a 53 kWh lithium iron phosphate (LFP) battery, while the AWD version is expected to include a 75 kWh LFP battery. The report says that the vehicle will be able to travel up to 500 km (310 miles) on a single charge, but it’s not clear whether this will be for the more efficient RWD version or the AWD variant.
Given the vehicle’s weight reduction compared to the Model 3, this type of range is likely for the lower trim level.
Variant
Motors
Battery Size
Estimated Range
RWD
1
53 kWh (LFP)
310 miles (500km)?
AWD
2
75 kWh (LFP)
?
There’s no news yet on the price of the AWD version, but we expect it to be about $5,000 more expensive than the RWD variant.
Once the vehicle ramps up in production, Tesla intends to produce about 10,000 of these per week globally or about 500,000 per year. As Tesla mentioned during one of their previous earnings calls, this next-gen vehicle will be built using Tesla’s current assembly lines with minimal changes. This should allow for a smoother and more predictable production ramp. While Tesla still plans to use its new unboxed assembly process, it’s now saving it for the robotaxi.
We’re expecting Juniper to launch early next year, as production has supposedly already begun at Giga Shanghai, at least on a limited prototyping basis. If the rollout matches the Model 3 Highland refresh, we’ll see Juniper arrive in China first and then make its way to North America and Europe by the end of 2025. The performance variants should launch in early 2026, after the standard models.
If you’re excited about Juniper, so are we! Check out our wishlist of features for Tesla’s Model Y refresh, and see everything we know so far.
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