- While Tesla ranked at the middle of the pack on Consumer Report’s new car reliability chart, it’s a different story when it comes to used cars.
- CR members ranked 5- to 10-year-old Tesla EVs as some of the least reliable cars in the country.
Tesla is one of the least reliable used car makers in the United States, according to Consumer Reports’ first-ever brand ranking for used cars focused on the reliability of 5- to 10-year-old models.
The maker of the Model 3 and Model Y is just three points away from the bottom of CR’s reliability chart, ranking above two other domestic automakers: Dodge and Chrysler. At the other end of the spectrum, Lexus ranked the highest, followed by Toyota and Mazda.
It’s worth noting that Tesla is the only all-electric carmaker on the chart and for a good reason. Back in 2014–the oldest model year considered for CR’s used car ranking–Tesla was the only mass-market car manufacturer in the U.S. shipping EVs to customers, a fact that remained unchanged until the beginning of the 2020s when Rivian, Polestar and Lucid began deliveries of their first passenger EVs.
In 2014, the Model S–Tesla’s first mass-produced car–was in its infancy, being launched just two years earlier. The Model X went into production in 2015. So as with every new carmaker, it’s no surprise that the first cars to roll off the assembly line can have some teething problems that eventually went away with newer cars like the Model 3 and Model Y.
In Consumer Reports’ predicted reliability chart for brand-new cars, Tesla ranked 14 out of 30 (Rivian was 28th and Chrysler 30th), so it’s clear that it’s doing something right.
“This difference shows in our data, where multiple owners of 2014-2015 Model S reported requiring replacement of the electric drive motor, battery pack, or infotainment hardware,” said Steven Elek, Consumer Reports’ senior automotive data analyst. “It is also possible that these components fail over time, meaning new Teslas have years to go before we know if similar issues occur. We will continue to monitor the data for possible trends.”
To come up with the data you see in the chart above, CR asked its members to report what problems they had with their 2014 to 2019 cars, focusing on 20 potential trouble areas such as squeaky brakes, broken interior trim and bigger issues like out-of-warranty engine, transmission or electric vehicle battery problems. The survey sample included more than 150,000 vehicles and the overall reliability scores from the six model years were averaged to create the used brand reliability score.
