I'm not a Tesla owner or fan, but this article doesn't quite say that. It reports on the JD Power and Associates dependability ranking, which is based on surveys of owner complaints about anything with their cars; Tesla ranks higher than average in number of complaints.

The only supporting quote about Tesla in the article: "Tesla owners reported more problems with their exterior and interior than with other systems like propulsion, battery or infotainment and navigation. However, some did complain about troubles with Tesla’s in-vehicle voice recognition." IMO this supports the sloppy assembly claim, but not the incompetent engineering claim. It jives with what I've heard about Tesla cars, that the fit and finish is not what you'd expect for this class of car.

Neither this article nor my personal experience with Tesla support your claim.

> Tesla owners reported more problems with their exterior and interior than with other systems like propulsion, battery or infotainment and navigation.

Tesla issues aren't about maintenance, they are mostly about quality control. Maintenance on Tesla is simple: air filters, brakes, tires, air conditioning.

https://www.tesla.com/support/car-maintenance

ON a modern car you only add oil changes until you get to 100k miles. Oil changes are fast and cheap.

Except for air conditioning - unless you mean the air filter the air conditioner should NEVER need maintenance - if you do maintenance it means an environmental disaster - they are closed systems and so the only time you service them is if they lost the Freon.

Hopefully there is no Freon to lose in the first place in the AC.

TuV results from mandatory safety checks in Germany seem to indicate that Tesla has significant issues with its suspension and some of the lights. It competes with Dacia for last place of all cars tested.

> Maintenance on Tesla is simple: air filters, brakes, tires, air conditioning.

Maintenance on a new ICE car is exactly the same, plus an oil change every couple of years.

But, due to more parts being present on an ICE car, isn't there a higher likelihood of something going wrong eventually?

There is a lot more: timing belt replacement, water pump replacement, oil change, oil filter, radiator, spark plugs, drive belts, ...

You don't need any of those things for a couple of years on a new car, and most of them never in five years. If you're buying new, as most electric car people are, it's the same burden.