Not a fan of any of the companies mentioned here but I’ll gladly applaud losses for Tesla.
Apparently they became the worst brand ever according to german obligatory inspection (in germany, france, … You have to get your car inspected like every year or so, and fix broken stuff or you can’t use it).
Worst. Ever!
They’re really building some hyped up crap.
I’ve seen worst ever results on mandatory safety checks from Germany, Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland.
Sweden: https://www.reddit.com/r/RealTesla/comments/1iyzmnv/tesla_is_dead_last_in_swedish_quality_control/
Tesla is dead last in Swedish quality control.
Denmark: https://cphpost.dk/2026-01-22/news/round-up/45-of-tesla-model-y-failed-inspection-last-year/
45% of Tesla Model Y failed inspection last year
Model 3 came after as 2nd worst.
Tesla Model Y named worst car for reliability in Germany’s major TÜV report
Almost Half of Tesla Model Ys Fail Mandatory Inspections in Denmark and Norway According to Data from Scandinavian Road Authority
Finland: https://www.roadandtrack.com/news/a69074489/tesla-model-3-failures-mandatory-inspections-finland/
Half of Tesla Model 3s Failed Their Mandatory Inspections in Finland
The issues are not about Autopilot or FSD which are only just beginning to be allowed to be used in Europe, but basic safety like suspension, steering, breaks etc.
It is noteworthy that the picture is the exact same across so many countries. Covering probably more about 50% of total sales of Tesla in Europe!In Denmark Tesla even made a lawsuit about it, trying to argue the test was unfair regarding play in the steering, which Tesla at first refused to fix on cars still under warranty. But Tesla lost the case 100% with no mitigating circumstances. And this issue was only one of many.
I wonder how much of that is EV drivers not bothering to service their vehicles, obviously no oil change required, and things like brake pads don’t get maintained so well.
Other brands have better statistics. EVs get service notifications just as any other kind of car. They get pollen filter,12 v battery, wheel, brakes and software updates changes just as often.
Tesla is simply singlehandedly dragging the fail rates down on the entire EV segment, making EV failures a talking point on Facebook.
These cars are relatively new, for some countries the first mandatory safety check is at 2 years for others it’s at 4 years. so these checks are while most cars are still under warranty. By far the most people have them checked at the regular service intervals.
There is also no reason to expect either Tesla owners or other EV owners should be worse at having their cars maintained than other car owners.
And while Tesla has a failure rate of almost 50% in the countries that have the first mandatory check at 4 years, other electric cars are way way better, and top of class. Here in Denmark the VW ID.4 which is currently the top selling EV, has a failure rate at first mandatory safety check of only 2%.This is not about EV cars in general, but Tesla alone that has a very bad problem with their quality and safety standards.
There are no regular service intervals with Tesla though. Which I honestly prefer. Add to that their notoriously bad quality control and the fact that friction brakes are almost never used, so they rot and rust away, and you have a perfect little shitshow of their own making.
The breaks is the same for all EV’s though. So there is no reason for Tesla brakes to rust more than other brands.
Here Tesla recommend service at 4 years, IDK how it is after that first service. But that coincide with the first mandatory safety check. Most brands have biannual intervals, which coincide with the safety checks being biannual after the first one.I bet most Tesla users have their car serviced before the mandatory safety check, because the car warranty also end after 4 years. So it would be pretty stupid not to.
So my guess is that the Tesla service checks are shit too.It is also remarkable that Tesla has 2 design features that are about to become illegal, the blinkers on the steering wheel, and the flux door handles because they don’t work for emergencies.
Tesla is simply not designing and building with safety in mind as much as other car makers.
So yes a shitshow indeed.
Other brands might be smart enough to use the friction breaks a bit more (or a lot more, which would not be that smart).
Then again, even the original Prius, the very model of quality and reliability, could get rusty brakes if driven exclusively in very flat areas.
Afaik the newer cars, at least the current model Y, have the blinker stalk again. Even Tesla had to concede that the yoke/joke steering wheel was at the very least not acceptable to too many customers.
The door handles are terrible, too. At least in the front you get a lever to open the door from the inside in case of a power failure (normal opening is with a button). The rear doors only have a small pull wire under a hidden hatch in the door pockets. Its bad enough that they didn’t integrate the electronic and mechanical opening in the front for some reason, but the rear is just utter madness. Someone should make them issue a recall and fix all the crazy doors.
LOL 😋 I live in Denmark a country that is mostly flat, our highest “mountain” is a hill you can “climb” in half an hour.
And I live in the flattest part of the country. I just recently figured out that to brake without the regenerative braking, I have to put the car in Neutral. Regenerative breaking does not have a setting to disable it.I think the blinker stalk may have become law here in EU, the directive for the door handles are AFAIK passed, but has a grace period, so China came first with making the door handles illegal, passing the law later, but enforcing it sooner. Kudos to China on that one.
I think in USA the department to make these regulations was closed by Elon Musk, in a very legal and very beautiful cooperation between government and private efficiency, as Trump would probably put it. 🤡
4 year warranty?
That’s a joke
My BYD has eight years, and I got the cheapest one they make
That’s a very good warranty, I think most companies have 4 years here, but BYD is new to their export markets, and they need to give people confidence to capture market share.
KIA and MG offer 7 year warranty here. KIA had serious quality problems not so long ago, so I guess they had to up the game. Here BYD offers 6 years, and Hyundai 5.
Wow, that’s some serious digging, ✊🏼!
Thanks, but that’s just it, it’s not even digging! But just what I remember to have seen in the news within the past few months. Some of which are repeats from last year!
I just thought it would be interesting to collect it all to show for each country, because I doubt many people know this.There are clear systemic problems with the safety and quality of Tesla cars.
Paywalled and in Finnish, but according to this, the most common issue found in inspections is an inadequate bushing, which many let fail because the first mandatory inspection is 4 years after purchase, and Tesla warranty will cover it (within 4 years / x KM)
Edit: In the
there was a picture of the supposedly cheap bushing used by teslaThanks, that’s very much like Denmark. AFAIK the inadequate bushing is what causes the play in the steering.
The headline translates to:
Behind Tesla’s record-breaking inspection figures, a cheap bushing is revealed, the part of which deliberately lets break down
Not the best translation, but it’s a very clear systemic design/production flaw. If it was only that one thing that was bad, it could perhaps be excused, but adding suspension and then even worse bad breaking performance, and we get an image of incompetence in making a quality car.
Apart from that, from what I’ve heard from multiple places, the cars are embarrassingly squeaky when driving on rough surfaces, this is even a thing right from the factory!
We also had a “weird” sound in our 4 year old VW iD.4 that annoyed the hell out of me, but the source was an ice scraper that I had put in the door compartment. That in turns would tilt and make a tiny bump. With that removed, our car is again exemplary in its lack of any noises that aren’t supposed to be there. I can’t imagine driving a Tesla, and it structurally sounding like a 15 year old car.
“Behind Tesla’s record-breaking[ly poor] inspection figures, a cheap bushing is revealed, which some [owners] deliberately let break down” would be more accurate but yeah. I’ve ridden in a Tesla quite a bit, most issues I came across were with the design, for example none of the five people in it could figure out how to turn down the rear passenger air blower, and when I was asked to go get something from the car, it took a while to figure out how to use the key card to open the doors. I also find the acceleration nauseating. I don’t remember hearing any squeaks, but there was quite a bit of road noise coming in
Edit: i added a picture of the cheapo bushing in my older comment here
They do a great work hiding that data from public. I keep seeing new teslas here in Italy and keep wondering how can people still keep buying those shit cars, not just because they’re giving a nazi their money, but because they are shit cars when it comes to safety and quality.
ive seen an increase of cybertrucks recently, all with that ugly design patterns people put on thier cars. wrapping it isnt going to hide the fact that you are a douche for buying it or how ugly the car is.
I’ve got a friend from Germany with a Tesla and keeps complaining about it. Shoddy work, many pieces that are not aligned properly, vibrate a certain speeds etc. “Wouldn’t happen in a German car.” Yet the acceleration and some of the more advanced features still make it fun to drive. Tesla outperforms by looking new and advanced while cutting corners with the basics.
I think with the German TÜV numbers it is not quite as clear cut.
My understanding is that telsa unlike other manufacturers doesn’t require regular inspections to keep warranties. So it might just be that other brands have just as many faults, but they get caught and fixed during those regular inspections, rather than at the official TÜV. Which wouldn’t show up in that dataset.
I haven’t seen any studies accounting for that discrepancy, but I’d be curious to see whether the higher failure rate persists after accounting for that.
You are right, no mandatory inspections required from Tesla. Saves a lot of money.
Most TÜV faults were the brakes and the suspension.
The friction brakes are almost never used so they rot and rust. Tesla could easily fix that with a software update that uses them every now and then while breaking. Not sure why they haven’t already, because the problem has existed forever. You can easily avoid the problem by using the friction breaks every few months. Afair the most reliable way is to break when the car is in „N“.
Teslas suspensions have never been really good and they had issues with especially poor quality parts a few years ago. Of course a regular inspection would have found them early, but since those don’t exist, TÜV was the first to fault cars left and right. Newer and replacement parts are supposedly of higher quality. If that is true the TÜV statistics should improve for Tesla over the next years. We shall see.
Car “enthusiast” in Malaysia kinda looked up to tesla. Coincidentally these “enthusiasts” often only look at spreadsheet before making up their mind, and Tesla know how to hide their shit.
I’m surprised they were ever in the top ten in China in the first place.
China was heavily promoting them before their own EV industry really took off. If you criticized Tesla for self driving causing a crash killing your family members, you’d be found guilty of slandering them. IIRC they also got tax incentives and such to build up their production in China for the Chinese market.
Nice. Keep up the good work, yall Chinese people!
Dang. If I owned Tesla stock I would be a bit worried about this at the moment.
Nah. Tesla stock has never responded to performance
Nothing is going to happen to the stock, unfortunately. Too many rich people would lose too much money if it tanked, so they will keep it overinflated and overvalued by any means necessary.
