Tesla’s Model X may be a forward-thinking vehicle, but there’s no getting around the fact that Tesla’s crossover SUV had more than its fair share of problems at launch. In fact, Tesla CEO Elon Musk even said that he somewhat regrets turning the Model X into an incredibly ambitious project.
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“I think we got a little carried away,” Musk said during the Model X’s official unveiling last year. “There’s far more here than is really necessary to sell a car.”
As we detailed earlier this week, the Model X performed exceedingly poorly in a recent Consumer Reports profile on reliable car brands. Labeling the Model X as “more showy than practical”, the report listed out a number of problem areas that it found with the car, including the vehicle’s Falcon-wing doors, locks and latches, power equipment, in-car electronics, and climate system.
Addressing such complaints during the company’s earnings conference call yesterday, Tesla executives made a point of noting that Model X reliability has improved drastically over the past few months.
With Musk calling the reliability improvements massive, Tesla CTO JB Straubel added that Model X related visits to Tesla service centers have gone down by an astonishing 92% throughout the year.
So the visits to service for Model X through the course of the year declined 92%, which is just a fantastic result both from the manufacturing side. And the vehicle reliability teams have been working hard to achieve that. And we’re going to continue to improve against that.
Indeed, this seems to be a pattern with Tesla. Its early production cars are riddled with problems, in turn prompting Tesla to work tirelessly to fix any number of pressing issues. A few months later, new cars coming off of the production line appear to be virtually flawless. While that might irk Consumer Reports, Tesla’s loyal fanbase still seems more than willing to put up with a few kinks in order to get their hands on a new Tesla vehicle as soon they can.
