JD Power survey hits electric cars. It’s Technical, Stupid!

Sign up for daily news updates from CleanTechnica by email. Or follow us on Google News!

---

JD Power has released it 2024 US Baseline Quality Study, which tracks owner satisfaction with a new car or truck in the US. Survey statistics are presented in terms of the number of owner complaints per 100 vehicles. A lower PP100 score indicates fewer reported problems and therefore higher quality. In this year’s survey, Ram vehicles had the lowest number of owner complaints, with 149 PP100. For other mass market brands, Chevrolet ranked second in initial quality with 160 100 PP and Hyundai was third with 162 PP100.

Power JD 2024 US Baseline Quality Study, now in its 38th year, is based on responses from 99,144 2024 new vehicle buyers and lessees who were surveyed after 90 days of ownership. For the first time, the study also includes repair visit data based on hundreds of thousands of real-world events reported by franchised new vehicle dealers.

If you are reading CleanTechnica, you’re probably not that interested in the starting quality of a Ram 1500 truck. Chances are, you’re much more interested in what’s going on with electric cars (which for the purposes of this discussion includes plug-in hybrids). Here the news is not good.

JD Power reports some issues with electric cars

JD Power says that proponents of battery electric vehicles often say that these vehicles should be less problematic and require fewer repairs than gasoline vehicles, since they have fewer parts and systems. However, new incorporated repair data shows that BEVs, as well as plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, require more repairs than gas vehicles in everything repair categories. “Owners of state-of-the-art BEVs and PHEVs are experiencing problems severe enough to take their new vehicle into the dealership at three times the rate of owners of gas-powered vehicles,” Frank Hanley, senior director of vehicle comparison at JD Power, said. [Note: Frank Hanley and I are not related. Although, it appears he may have an IQ several points higher than mine, evidenced in part by the fact that he has a real job.]

“Gas and diesel vehicles are averaging 180 PP100 this year, while BEVs are 86 points higher at 266 PP100. While there are no notable improvements in BEV quality this year, the gap between Tesla’s BEV quality and traditional OEMs’ BEV quality has closed, with both at 266 PP100. In the past, Tesla has performed better, but that is not the case this year, and the removal of traditional feature controls, such as turn signals and wiper blades, has not been well received by Tesla customers,” says JD Power .

It’s Technical, Stupid!

The problems had little to do with the EV’s mechanics—motors, batteries, and so on—and almost entirely the technology. As with all things involving EVs, you have to separate Tesla from the rest of the pack, thanks to its large representation among people who own electric vehicles. threshold say. Tesla typically outperformed older automakers’ EVs in past JD Power surveys, but now that gap has closed, with Tesla scoring as poorly as the rest. JD Power attributes this to major design changes in Tesla vehicles, such as the removal of traditional feature controls such as turn signals and wiper blades. Most of the complaints have to do with the technology, a major concern given that the auto industry is haphazardly trying to cram as much software into their models as possible. JD Power has reported this issue before and it seems to be getting worse, threshold say.

People are frustrated about false rear seat warnings and inaccurate and annoying alerts from advanced driver assistance systems, especially around new features like rear cross traffic warnings and automatic rear emergency braking. Infotainment touchscreens are giving people headaches. EVs had 30 percent more problems with “Features, Controls and Displays” than conventional vehicles.

Connecting smartphones is a big problem for many drivers. When they try to find relief from their terrible native software experiences by mirroring their smartphones, they run into serious obstacles. “Customers most often experience connection difficulties [their phones] in their vehicle or lose connectivity,” JD Power reports. “More than 50% of Apple users and 42% of Samsung users access their respective feature every time they drive, illustrating that customers want their smartphone experience to be brought into the vehicle and also want the feature to integrate wirelessly”.

None of this should be all that shocking. These types of polls are usually a good measure of known versus unknown. Old versus new. We are in the midst of a major shift from traditional gasoline-powered vehicles to high-powered computers running on large batteries. This transition is proving to be messy, and customers are finding themselves caught in the middle.

JD Power says quite clearly, “Controls in the vehicle are out of control. Features, controls and displays are the second most problematic category in the study, only slightly better than the notoriously trouble-prone infotainment category. From such seemingly simple functions as windshield wipers and rearview mirrors to the more complex operation of an OEM smartphone app, this category is especially troublesome in EVs. The incidence of PP100 in this category is more than 30% higher in electric vehicles than in gasoline vehicles. This is exacerbated by Tesla’s recent switch to steering wheel-mounted buttons for horn and turn signal functions, a change that was not well received by owners.”

Tesla, Tech and the EV Revolution

I’m going to go out on a limb here and maybe piss off some readers. Let it be so. When Tesla burst onto the scene, he started several revolutions all at once. The first was proving that electric cars were more than glorified golf carts. In this regard, it has had great success. It could be argued that Tesla lit the fuse on the worldwide EV revolution. Well done! He also introduced the direct-to-consumer sales model, which has largely succeeded, except in a few US states where powerful merchant groups have prevented it from happening, including Elon Musk’s latest adopted home of Texas. Next is the Supercharger network, which is the envy of the world.

Last but not least is the “computer on wheels” design, with a large touchscreen instead of all the stalks, buttons, knobs and gauges people are used to. I will point out here the usually negative experience people have had when trying to rent Teslas from Hertz and other rental car companies. They had no idea how to use them. We are used to cars having certain attributes. The accelerator is on the right, the brake pedal is on the left. Turn signals are on the left, wiper controls on the right. Radio and climate controls are in the center. There is a collection of gauges in front of the driver. You get in and whether it’s a Mercedes or a Yugo, you know very well where everything is and how everything works.

With the EV revolution came the computer-on-wheels revolution. The first one has been wonderfully successful. Second? Not that much. In fact, the latter may actually hinder the transition to electric cars. We don’t need or want to become computer geeks to drive an electric car. The advantages of driving with electrons instead of molecules – greatly increased efficiency, abundant torque, a silent system, regenerative braking, among others – can be enjoyed just as much in a car where you have to use your windshield wipers, tune your radio, and adjust your climate controls.

Eliminating some of this digital complexity would help lower the price of electric cars so more people could afford to own one, which would help fuel the EV revolution faster. Every Tesla produced today includes an on-board liquid-cooled supercomputer with eleventy-six times more processing power than the computers that guided the astronauts to the moon and back. That computer is an expensive package that most of us could do without – and that could depreciate cars if it were hidden.

It can also reduce the cost of repairs. I mentioned that my Model Y took a bruise in a parking lot incident earlier this year – a dent in the left fender behind the front wheel. The repair was $1600, but the body shop that did the work told me if the cam on that fender – which is part of the Autopilot/FSD ecosystem – was damaged, a new one would cost $1500 and then the car would have to be sent to a Tesla service location to reprogram the system – another $3,000. If so, that $1,600 repair would cost over $6,000. Hertz was shocked by the cost of repairing Teslas that were damaged. Maybe that’s why some people are saying no thanks to EVs amid higher-than-expected insurance costs.

The problem with all this complexity is that it’s making the experience of driving an electric car much less enjoyable. My old Irish grandmother would say that Tesla is being too clever by half. People hear about things like JD Power Initial Quality Study and think, “I don’t want an electric car. Many problems.” And they have a point, even though these problems have less to do with the electric car part of the puzzle and more to do with the “computer on wheels” part.

So please, Tesla and other manufacturers, put all those geegaws and chargers in your premium models if you want, but give us some simple, affordable electric cars that will allow us to enjoy the benefits of electric driving without all the trouble. computer on wheels” model brings with it. Is that too much to ask? Apparently so. One has to wonder if all this “computer on wheels” stuff is for our own good for the good of the manufacturers who can give us extra cost upgrades over the air for as long as we own our cars?

Below is the full JD Power Initial Quality Study 2024 chart showing where each company placed in the survey. If you were a customer looking to buy an electric car, would you choose an EV after finding this online survey? Probably not, and that’s pretty much the point.