Re:Tesla plunges in Consumer Reports' rankings
by prostoalex on Monday October 24, 2016 @11:40PM
(#12785108)
Their ratings are comprised of two parts - CR's own driving tests as well as reader survey that goes into painful details of each car owned, number of malfunctions and costs of fixing those malfunctions over the previous year.
Model S was a fairly new vehicle, so in year one they only did the first part - there weren't many Tesla owners who were also CR subscribers who also have had the car for at least a year to generate a reliable corpus of reader ratings.
Things changed in year two when reader surveys started trickling in, with Model S owners reporting higher than average amount of issues, which impacted the overall ratings.
CR's own driving tests still earned Model S a "CR Recommended" badge, it just no longer came with a spotless 100-point score they've previously assigned.
So do they like Tesla or dislike Tesla? Only a year ago or so they rated the Model S as the best car they had ever reviewed; then there were a few Autopilot failures and some troubles with the Model X -- now the honeymoon seems to be over.
It's not that I think CR does a wonderful job with cars -- or with any other product that I'm familiar with -- but I think that their biases are more complex than a simple "they like who they like".