The annual car reliability survey by Consumer Reports found EVs are 79 percent more likely to have problems than conventional cars. Consumers reported electric drive motors, charging and EV batteries had the most common issues associated with EVs, according to the survey.
Jake Fisher, senior director of auto testing at Consumer Reports, noted that there may be “growing pains” among EVs because they are based on new technology or are being manufactured by new upstart companies, such as Rivian. He said companies “need some time to work out the bugs,” according to the magazine.
Plug-in hybrids are more likely to have more issues than gas-powered cars, EVs and hybrid vehicles. The survey said that plug-in hybrids have 146 percent more problems than gas-powered cars.
I agree that the acceleration thing shouldn’t be classified as a problem, but I think you should familiarize yourself with the scope of vehicle recalls because those are comparatively minor defects based on number of affected vehicles. While any number above 0 for safety defects is seriously concerning, overall, Tesla hasn’t been bad despite the blog posts otherwise.
Recalls are typically given to a large range of potentially affected vehicles and assessed with the actual realistic number that might have an issue. A lot of times this will be a low percentage of a batch of affected units. Any number of recalls for safety-critical issues that is above zero is terrible, but most vehicles have safety issues of varying risk, and the risk varies based on circumstance.
For the seatbelt incident, the recall report estimates ~158 vehicles being impacted of a pool of 15869. For the steering wheel issue, the recall report indicates that 13 vehicles, of a pool of 137 are affected. But if you look at the design of the steering wheel, the bolt is not the only instrument passing control from the wheel to the column, so at least you can pull over. As far as steering safety recalls go, this is dangerously embarrassing that they didn’t attach a bolt but you can maintain control of the vehicle by pushing the wheel forward.
For fun, let’s take a look at a 2018 F-150 (pick any car at least a couple years old, I just know Ford’s been in the news for big recalls lately). While the F-150 is among the most-sold vehicles, even if it outsold Teslas 100:1, Ford’s numbers get… concerning.
But if we’re using these numbers as the bar for dangerous behavior, consider the handful of vehicles that forced Hyundai and Kia to do a recall on most of their eGMP EVs to fix an issue where a voltage fluctuation can make the car roll away when parked (~107 vehicles for Hyundai) and ~90 for Kia, with an ongoing investigation of 30 reports of sudden power loss which can also be dangerous if you’re travelling at highway speeds. There are a potential 39,557 vehicles impacted (though I’d guess if this becomes a recall, it’ll get narrowed down to 1-2% with an actual risk).