So much of the test.
The origin story was that its technology was great.
It was a great product, but they've made some tweaks that on specific models.
I think it's Model X and S after a certain year and the refreshed Model
three that actually have not gone down well with the Tesla owners.
Yeah, that's right. It did start in 2021 with S and X, it's
now migrated to three, which means it's hitting the mainstream buyer.
And the mainstream buyer does not like giving up their turn signal stocks.
What Elon is trying to do is trying to go stock three so you lose the turn
signal stock. Then you also lose the windshield wiper
stalk on the other side. All of those have migrated to being
buttons on the steering wheel. So as regular viewers of Bloomberg
Technology know, I have a model Y which I pay for myself, but it has the stalks.
The one thing I'd observe is like the

screen in the middle.
There are no, there are no dials or buttons on the dash.
I spend a lot of time looking at the screen and reading the JD report.
I think that was a big point that many of the respondents made as well.
Absolutely, JD Power said. The author of the study told me that
that the consumers report that they have much more eyes off the road time because
they're hunting around for these, you know, ordinary functions.
This isn't high level tech that people are looking for it.
They just want to beep the horn because something happened in front of them and
they can't find it. We won't get into the whole idea about
the future of Tesla and full self-driving wear to Elon Musk's mind.
You won't need to pay attention anyway, but you've covered this industry for
such a long time. You've written brilliant pieces.
The product level. How impactful are these JD reports?
Like does the average consumer pick it

up and go. Wow, this will inform whether
or not I get a Tesla? Absolutely.
J.D. Power and Consumer Reports, those two
measures are the ones that carry the most weight with consumers.
You can see it in the automakers' advertising.
We all know, you know, run the J.D. Power seal if they're one of the
preferred brands. And Tesla has always been the highest
ranked. Now, all the other EVs, Rivian, the legacy
automakers, they've all caught up with Tesla, primarily because of these
rudimentary functions that have been put on the steering wheel and taken away
from their usual locations. In the story, there's a chart of
problems per 100 vehicles, but it's also a quality survey.
Can we just quickly talk about the quality part of this discussion?
Yeah. So I mean, quality is defined in a
couple of ways. One is things that break that don't go
well, but also quality in the survey now.

reflects what consumers are having
trouble operating. It might be functioning as designed, but
if the driver can't figure out how to use it, then that's a quality
problem. And so that's what's showing up on Tesla
here. These are things the buttons work if you
can find them, but can you find them in an emergency situation?
And others have pointed out if you're in a roundabout, the way the turn signals
work is a couple of directional arrows on the steering wheel.
You're in a roundabout and you're in the middle of it.
Your steering wheel's upside down and you don't know which arrow to push.

Tesla’s Design Changes Confuse Drivers, Undercut EV Quality

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