I think one of the questions is gizmo factor. My car doesn't have an infotainment system, so I can't have problems with it.
A premium car with premium luxuries like bluetooth, air conditioning, GPS, self-driving, power windows, heads-up display, that button that open doors on minivans, airbags, and the like will have a lot more failures than a 1950-era Ford F150 truck. Does that make it a worse car? A better car? Or a bad survey?
Tesla has a lot of gizmos. Luxury cars have more gizmos than my car. I think the survey reflects that more than anything else.
> A premium car with premium luxuries like bluetooth, air conditioning, GPS, self-driving, power windows, heads-up display, that button that open doors on minivans, airbags
Of your list, the only thing I'd consider a premium luxury today is a heads-up display (and self-driving, though I'm heavily cynical on the _current state_ of self-driving).
Tesla isn't being compared against 1950s era trucks, it's being compared against 2020 models. Of your list, I'd not consider any of those other items gizmos. I mean, airbags? AC?
I'll admit I threw AC, airbags, and power windows in for comedic value, but as for the rest of those, my car definitely does not have them.
It's not just which gizmos, but also the specific gizmos. If your car's audio has two speakers, versus a dozen woofers, tweeters, and what-not, more things can go wrong. If there's split front/rear AC, more things can go wrong. If your car has a motor to move the seats, more things can go wrong. When I sit in a Tesla (or many luxury cars), it has about three or four times as many things to break as my much more basic car. And when they break, they take a lot more to fix.
I don't want that. If someone still sold a VW Bug classic, or an old-school Ford Truck, I'd be driving that.
Or to be fair, the one thing on the list I do want is bluetooth. I'd trade my fancy-schmancy power windows for bluetooth if I could.
Word. My 2011 Ford Fiesta had bluetooth, AC, and airbags.
But to the OP/parent's point, my newer car is a luxury model and it has a touchscreen infotainment thing -- and I hate it. 10/10 would rather have nobs that I can feel physically, or even just elevated bumps on the plastic (kinda like braille) so that I know I'm on the "seek station >>" part of the touchscreen.
The majority of problems mentioned in the article are not gizmos, but things that exist on every car. Brake pads, seats not fitting, panel gaps causing leaks. Given Tesla's manufacturing process it seems utterly predictable that they would have more issues with build quality than any other automaker.
A premium car with premium luxuries like bluetooth, air conditioning, GPS, self-driving, power windows, heads-up display, that button that open doors on minivans, airbags, and the like will have a lot more failures than a 1950-era Ford F150 truck. Does that make it a worse car? A better car? Or a bad survey?
Tesla has a lot of gizmos. Luxury cars have more gizmos than my car. I think the survey reflects that more than anything else.