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TÜV vehicle report 2024 – Tesla Model 3, most issues (German) (adac.de)
20 points by tmikaeld 7 months ago | hide | past | favorite | 52 comments



There is something weird in this chart. Clicking on the individual statistics ("Tesla Model 3") shows that it has excellent stats.

https://www.adac.de/rund-ums-fahrzeug/autokatalog/marken-mod...

Ah, okay confusing. The original link is about quality issues. The individual statistics are about breakdown statistics.

So quality wise, checked by the TÜV (prerequisite for operating a vehicle in Germany) - not good.

Breakdown statistics, tracked by the ADAC (largest automotive club in Germany) - excellent.


It is weird for you to see different things in two totally different statistics? Hauptuntersuchung != Pannenstatistik.

The first checks whether it is safe to drive with this specific car on German streets. The second is about how often the ADAC had to help people whose cars broke down.


Accidents/breakdowns per 1.000 cars is obviously not the same thing as number of failed inspections. Also: All new cars in that price range have excellent stats in the statistic you mentioned.


I was pretty shocked Toyota RAV4 model year 2020 is about 12 times more likely to break down than a Tesla Model 3.

And 21x more for same comparison with model year 2019!

So not all cars have excellent statistics.


Indeed. Teslas seem to be one of the least likely cars to break down: https://www.adac.de/rund-ums-fahrzeug/unfall-schaden-panne/a...

I suppose those inspection failures are often about unused break pads. Perhaps Tesla should prompt the user to occasionally use breaks to keep them from rusting?


Tesla does this to some extent automatically.

>> To ensure brakes remain responsive in cold and wet weather, Model 3 is equipped with brake disc wiping. When cold and wet weather is detected, this feature repeatedly applies an imperceptible amount of brake force to remove water from the surface of the brake discs.


Definitely: Some manufacturers do this for other onboard systems (e.g. exhaust gas treatment). Tesla should use the break pads occasionally instead of relying on recuperation.


https://car-recalls.eu/reliability/reliability-tuv-report-20...

The average Tesla has driven almost twice as far as most of the top 10


When you click on the name, you get the "Pannenstatistik". Which sounds like it is how many cars insured by ADAC had a problem on the road.

The chart on the "TÜV-Report" seems to be what percentage of cars turned out to have a problem when routinely checked in a garage.


your link refers to "pannen" which means breakdowns, e.g. your car dying on the highway.

OPs article refers to a report by TÜV which inspects cars every 3 (for older cars every two years) to ensure that they dont have any flaws and are compliant with regulation. This inspection is mandatory in Germany.

source: am German, but not a subject matter expert.


those are accident stats, not inspections


Tesla makes low quality cars for premium prices


When compared to ICE, yes.


I mean they point out the issue quite clearly. The breaks are used less which leads to them failing.


Compared to any car. The f-150 lighting (not that I would ever buy a pickup truck) is less expensive and higher quality than the cybertruck. Once companies that actually know how to make cars fully invest into electric, small time players like Tesla and rivian will be in trouble.


Actually know as in.. panel gaps?


Delivery, quality control, panel gaps, paint, quality interiors, mass scale production, etc.


They don't know electronics though, as per CT beating them to 48V after 30 years of feet dragging.


The EV-specific failure they cite first is that they're finding EV's have reduced braking performance, basically because people are relying on regenerative braking to the point where their brake pads are rusting apart.

Usually this sort of thing only happens to the handbrake, e.g. to drivers of vehicles with an automatic transmission that place a lot of faith in the performance of their transmission's parking pawl.

If this sounds weird you probably haven't driven in Germany.

I love driving there, but if there's one country where I'd buy that a substantial number of drivers are OCD enough to have trained themselves to literally never press the brake pedal, it's the Germans.


I wonder if they ever consider moving side lights into steering wheel that happened with newest revision of Model 3, so their location keeps changing if you turn steering wheel. Colleague has it and he hates it with passion, I was even surprised this could pass european homologisation since its obvious security risk.


I’m hoping the EU forces them to change this before I’m shopping for another vehicle.

Or everyone else sorts out the charging network. Either works for me.


When you say "side lights" you mean the indicators or what an American might call "blinkers"?

There does seem to be a lot of innovation for innovations sake at Tesla. Like putting in a yoke style steering wheel but not actually going the whole hog to make the turning response dynamic. Or moving critical features into the on screen menus.


It's innovation for the sake of cost cutting, nothing else. Putting buttons on a steering wheel isn't innovative in any way (or at least it hasn't been for the last 20+ years), but it is cheap.


That's why Tesla make a profit on their EVs, unlike most companies


Nothing quite like defending a company selling trash by saying "but hey, at least they're profitable!".


You can always pay more for a different car, but they won't make that many because they're not profitable, so expect a long wait


If you want the world to transition to EV's and away from fossil fueled vehicles, cost reductions are necessary.


I don't have particular interest in that. But I suppose having access to poorly executed examples of such is important to the folks that do. In the same way having access to Shein is important to folks that think the world needs more environmentally friendly fashion.

I'll keep using old car models that don't require child laborers removing several tons of material from the earth to satiate my personal environmental sanctimoniousness.


> that don't require child laborers removing several tons of material from the earth

So no car, then? Gasoline vehicles use cobalt and rare earths too.

If you were actually serious, you'd be driving an EV with LFP batteries and induction motors.


Mining.com, who would seem to be knowledgable about mining, disagree: https://www.mining.com/web/evs-vs-gas-vehicles-what-are-cars...

Do you have a source for your claim that cobalt/rare-earths are used in conventional cars to the same extent as electric?

And my point all up is that no new vehicles should be mined/built/purchased, at least while any old reasonably efficient one remains drivable. And that is what I have done. Pulling a bunch of lithium out of the earth isn't better than simply using what we already have made.


Modern cars use lots of platinum group metals, which use lots of slave labour.

Your point about used cars is a good one, but cars are relatively fungible. Almost every purchase of a used car causes a new car to be built & sold.


Are you referring to the ~4 grams of palladium/platinum in a catalytic converter? That does not seem comparable to the many kilograms of cobalt/rare-earths in an EV.

And have you recanted the statement that ICE cars use cobalt and rare-earths anywhere near as much as electrics do?

> Almost every purchase of a used car causes a new car to be built & sold.

No, the only cause of a new car being built and sold is an individual deciding that a new car is a good choice for them. Them selling their old car is a result of that same decision, not a cause. And that decision comes more and more nowadays from a misguided impression that "my old car is bad for the environment, I must buy a new environmentally friendly one to be a good person".


When you buy a used car, you are removing it from the market making it unavailable to somebody else who wants a car. That other person may buy a used car instead.

When you buy a used car, you increase demand, raising prices for used cars. This makes new cars relatively more attractive.


And? You're willfully ignoring what puts the used car on the market in the first place.


Platinum ore is 5 ppm platinum. So 5 grams of palladium requires a ton of mining.


This article has platinum ore at 50oz/ton, or 1,400 PPM. Do you have a source for your claim that it is in fact one third of one percent of the stated value? https://technology.matthey.com/article/7/4/136-143/

Edit: I see now that it is in fact 1,400 PPM of some intermediary matte, not raw ore. Th matte/ore ratio is not stated. But that matte is nickel/copper rich, and the platinum is in some sense a impurity in the existing ore that would likely be mined for its other metals anyways.

Even still: not all ore is equal. Platinum mining is a heavily industrialized process where machines do the hard labor, cobalt is child labor camps digging.


Of course LFP batteries, like in most Model 3s, are Cobalt free. It's not like electric car manufacturers aren't trying to improve things.


Good job digging up, transporting, and then burning oil has no side effects


> There does seem to be a lot of innovation for innovations sake at Tesla.

The latest example is that the physical buttons to change gears on the Cybertruck are located in the ceiling near the rear view mirror.


Those rules are only there to keep new car companies from becoming competition to the existing car industry. Once you are big enough, they don't really apply.

edit: Downvote me all you like but just look at what for example VW did in the emissions scandal. Not like anyone went to jail for that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_emissions_scandal


Given there was a recall, a $1B fine, and a judgement that VW must refund customers the full cost of the car, they clearly do apply. Saying people must be imprisoned is moving the goalposts.

Oh, and execs quite literally did go to prison: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-volkswagen-southkorea-idU....


There is a huge difference in how this was handled in germany vs everywhere else.


Elaborate? Germany issued recalls and is forcing VW to pay back full price of the car, in response to USA issuing rebates larger than what Germany originally did, and South Korea sent people to prison. It looks like everywhere punished them.


Everyone that has been convicted has been convicted to probation for some minor or major fines. People don't get the full price back but can sue* to get the car bought back at a reduced value depending on the age and kilometers driven.

* there has been some work to get something similar to a class action law suit against VW going but it's hardly the same severity or consumer protection like in the US.


Just because EU has weaker consumer protection in areas it actually matters than USA (preferring performative legislation such as GDPR, but I digress) doesn't mean the rules don't apply. They just don't apply to the severity you personally think is fit.


I read this via Firefox translate, and noticed that one of the numbers changed, from 5.7% to 55.7% which is interesting.


TL;DR

15% of Model 3's fail the mandatory audit after 2 years due to 'considerable defects'.


And the average across all 2-3 year old cars is 5%.

It does not tall us much unless we would also get some information on how expensive it is to fix the problem.

A 5% problem rate can be worse than a 15% rate if the cars in the 5% category have issues that are more than 3x more expensive to fix.


They fail TÜV. You fail TÜV if you polish your headlight glass, or mount replacement panel/bumper/hitch without special certificate.


I wonder how biased TUV is in this report. I guess I will never know because I don't read german. It does sound odd to see Tesla at the top in a market they share with: Skoda, Logan, Citroen, Renault, Seat, Fiat, ...


I would doubt this report is biased. It's an aggregation of mandatory audits that cars have to go through every 3/2 years in Germany.


You could maybe say that German cars are are built taking the German inspections into account, I doubt it's high on Tesla's list of concerns (both in terms of being a US company and market size, for now).

The inspection is very rigorous, btw.




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