Tesla, Polestar, Other EV Manufacturers, Recorded Significant Quality Declines According to 2022 Report

According to J.D.'s initial quality study for 2022, new car quality fell by 11% this year 2022 due to part shortages, shipping snarls, and global trade disruptions. The ranking was led by Buick, Dodge, and Chevrolet, with Volvo, Chrysler, and Polestar rounding out the bottom three.

Report Ranks Tesla With Marginal Improvement

According to the report, electric vehicles experienced more issues than automobiles and trucks with standard internal combustion engines. Amodeo anticipates this will alter "very quickly" as manufacturing increases and customer acceptability develops. According to the report, Tesla's vehicles experienced fewer difficulties on average than EVs from other automakers.

Elon Musk's electric vehicle firm improved its first quality ranking marginally and was formally featured on the list for the first time this year. JD Power earlier polled Tesla owners, but their results were not considered official. Polestar, a newcomer to the electric car market, came at the bottom of the list, with 328 faults recorded per 100 freshly sold or leased vehicles.

Four times as many new models performed worse than their category norms. Disruptions such as a semiconductor chip shortage and staff shifts led to vehicle troubles hitting an all-time high in the study's 36-year history, J.D. Power stated on Tuesday.

Electric Car Manufacturers Suffer From Significant Declines

Electric car manufacturers, in particular, are seeing significant-quality declines, with Polestar ranked dead last. Meanwhile, Tesla ranks eighth from the bottom, maintaining its pattern of poor production. JD Power identified 226 faults per 100 Tesla vehicles in this year's survey. According to the poll, 240 faults were recorded per 100 non-Tesla EVs, a tiny decrease from 251 last year as more EV models entered the road.

The first quality rankings from J.D. Power are based on survey answers from new car buyers or lessees of current model-year cars who reply during the first 90 days of ownership. In independent polls, the rankings take into account long-term durability, the attraction of the car's features, and sales or dealership experience.

The poll is based on responses from 84,165 confirmed owners and lessees of personal-use automobiles registered between November 2021 and February 2022. The survey responses offered statistics for 33 distinct manufacturers and 189 different model automobiles.

Panel alignment and poor paint quality were more prevalent complaints for Tesla, which scored seventh from the bottom this year with the same first quality score as Mitsubishi, than customer dissatisfaction with the company's mobile app or infotainment.

Software is still a chronic concern in the automotive sector, accounting for six of the top ten difficulties. The main issue was one of the most popular technologies in new cars: Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. CarPlay, in an instance, is utilized by half of all customers polled, and they report fewer issues than the 17 percent who use Android Auto.

Both CarPlay and Android Auto were tough to grasp, according to survey respondents, and consumers are increasingly having difficulty making the link function. The increased prevalence of wireless CarPlay and Android Auto is due to an increase in connection issues, which has risen from 4.9 per 100 vehicles in 2021 to 5.8 in 2022.

The poll indicates that manufacturers' built-in speech recognition technologies are operating as planned, with voice recognition being the only category to improve among other infotainment features such as touchscreen display, Bluetooth connectivity, and parking cameras.

In addition to the reduction in quality, the research cites features that manufacturers have reduced to combat the chip scarcity, such as supplying fewer vehicles with sophisticated driver-assist technologies, heated seats, and parking aid modules, only including a single keyfob, and more. Last year, Chevrolet eliminated wireless phone chargers and gas-saving auto start-stop capabilities from several SUV models, and Ford deleted some A/C settings from the Explorer SUV's back seats.