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Every American Car Brand Is on the Bottom Half of CR's Reliability Rankings

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Re: Every American Car Brand Is on the Bottom Half of CR's Reliability Rankings

#181

Post by mgoetzke »

thdrdt wrote: post #116

This is why I think Tesla will have a hard time when most manufacturers are creating EVs. In Europe we are already seeing that a lot of Tesla owners are turning to Porsche. The build quality is just sad for such an expensive car. Wind blowing into the side window!? Ok, they will fix it over time, but I'm just flabbergasted they shipped those cars.

sorry, but where are we seeing that ? Has Porsche already delivered any electric cars to customers ? Or are you talking about the fact that the e.g German media finally has a darling to talk about, even if it is really really pricey and slower with less range ?

I have no issues with E Porsche. Good for them and their fans. I hope they sell as many as you can even if they take all Tesla customers that overlap. But Porsche only sold 256,255 cars last year after decades of existence since they target a certain clientele. Tesla will surpass that this year in volume.

Re: Every American Car Brand Is on the Bottom Half of CR's Reliability Rankings

#182

Post by SQL2219 »

rtpg wrote: post #5

This is a bit flame bait-y but I really feel like America is getting a super Galapagos effect compared to the rest of the world. Everything is super different and weird and kinda bad, and nobody seems to notice. I go to peoples houses in the US sometimes. Some of these houses are multimillion dollar homes. The doors are all terrible. The plumbing is crap. The furniture just feels bad. The cheapest studio apartment in…

80% of that $2M home was for the land, no money left for build quality.

Re: Every American Car Brand Is on the Bottom Half of CR's Reliability Rankings

#183

Post by mojuba »

w-m wrote: post #108
kstenerud wrote: post #2

It's interesting to note the difference in communication styles when company PR teams respond to requests for comments. Fiat Chrysler and Chevy both responded in predictable marketroid speak, complete with extensive use of passive voice and grand, hand-wavey platitudes "We care committed to blah blah blah" "Quality is of the greatest importance blah blah blah" "blah blah above industry average blah blah blah" "blah b…

I found this part very interesting: "In fact, the quality of brand-new Model X vehicles today is 3.5 times better than the quality of brand new Model X cars from 2015.". (I have no idea what "quality" means here, and how you can put a number on that, that rises 3.5x, but that's beside the point). With one sentence, Tesla is telling 2015 customers that they got screwed over, and future customers that they should wait…

The quality can be measured by cost of maintenance or more likely by the costs associated with warranty repairs (and product returns) incurred by the company.

Re: Every American Car Brand Is on the Bottom Half of CR's Reliability Rankings

#184

Post by Joeri »

Someone1234 wrote: post #50
rtpg wrote: post #5

This is a bit flame bait-y but I really feel like America is getting a super Galapagos effect compared to the rest of the world. Everything is super different and weird and kinda bad, and nobody seems to notice. I go to peoples houses in the US sometimes. Some of these houses are multimillion dollar homes. The doors are all terrible. The plumbing is crap. The furniture just feels bad. The cheapest studio apartment in…

American bread is particularly problematic as someone that moved from Europe. Until I found bread I liked I'd often joke that it was suitable for storage in a bomb shelter since it has an unnatural shelf-life and tastes like it. After a tedious search, we wound up buying $2.60 "Sara Lee Artesano Style Bread" which is still less good than a 70c loaf of Hovis in the UK, and certainly less good than fresh made French br…

To be fair, it’s often difficult to find good bread in many countries. In asia it seems to be down to whether there are still french influences in the city you’re in.

Good chocolate is even rarer. I’m from belgium and chocolate abroad is almost always disappointing. Most of the time if you look at the composition it wouldn’t actually be allowed to even call it chocolate when selling it in belgium.

Re: Every American Car Brand Is on the Bottom Half of CR's Reliability Rankings

#185

Post by burntoutfire »

mariorossi666 wrote: post #102
lgbr wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Then you get to grocery stores, and you have to go to the “fancy places” to even get the baseline of quality you see in the rest of the developed world. All the chocolate is bad. While I agree with you on other points, I take issue with this. American grocery stores are a real treat when visiting. Produce is colorful, plentiful, and delicious thanks to American embrace of GMO's and subsidies for farmers. Raw ingred…

> is so obsessed with the discount model, It is really not. Nobody goes to LIDL to buy food, unless has some real money problem. You have to make a different comparison: buy quality food from a local farmer and the same food from a local European farmer. You will notice that in Europe is much more common than you think, it can usually be found in the local market in your neighborhood and it's much cheaper than in the…

> Nobody goes to LIDL to buy food, unless has some real money problem.

Then I guess most of Poland has "real money problems", as LIDL and equivalents is where we shop. However, I think it's just that we don't like to overpay for stuff.

Re: Every American Car Brand Is on the Bottom Half of CR's Reliability Rankings

#186

Post by Daniel_sk »

blkhawk wrote: post #169
Daniel_sk wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can set a temperature on a thermostatic shower head and you just adjust the flow of water. Most newer bathrooms have thermostatic shower heads in Europe. But even the old ones with hot + cold valves allow you to not only set the temperature but also the flow. I think most US showers have just a single faucet where you can control the temperature but not the pressure/flow. You always have to go from cold to hot (i…

those are common in Europe too. A Thermostat is nice but it does not solve the "first water" problem. A shower will always run cold at first.

Also - there is almost no cold water if I switch on the shower. That's because (at least in new houses) there is a closed circle for warm water and the heating system cycles the warm water (2 pipes of warm water + 1 pipe of cold water for each water outlet) in the pipes to keep it ready for use. You have instant warm water.

Re: Every American Car Brand Is on the Bottom Half of CR's Reliability Rankings

#187

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

VintageCool wrote: post #118
Someone1234 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd speculate that it is because people still buy them regardless. That may sound overly simplistic but I think there's an element of truth to it. Foreign vehicle companies needed to fight to gain market share in the US, often needing to be much better just to be compared as equals. Look at KIA recently doing so, now they're doing very well reliability wise and offer a substantial free warranty, but ask random people…

Americans generally don't buy American cars, right? We buy American-made trucks. The US imposed a 25% tax on imported light trucks and has for decades (the "chicken tax"). I think that this has resulted in a weird distortion where American auto makers focus heavily on that one more profitable market segment, and advertise most heavily on that one market segment, and have done so for generations.

I think the Ford F-150 is the best-selling vehicle made by US companies.

There's a reason that Musk is building a Tesla truck.

Re: Every American Car Brand Is on the Bottom Half of CR's Reliability Rankings

#188

Post by aembleton »

rjzzleep wrote: post #129
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the same in the UK, where most of the bread you can get is basically intended for a toaster. But, it's down to volume and consumption; in my country (NL), bread is a daily staple, often featured in two meals a day - so a family will easily go through a loaf a day. It makes more sense to optimize the production and logistics for a shelf life of days instead of weeks. We can get reasonably fresh (factory-produced)…

I actually hosted some couch surfers from the UK and other places in the world while in Germany. I had a local market with an old bakery(remember that even in Germany the great majority of bakers are now a handful of companies) very close to my place. The bread they bake is genius it has just the right amount(little) sourness and never tastes soaky, crispy around but soft inside. But the point being is that some of t…

I didn't know we had HFCS in the UK. What products contain it?

Re: Every American Car Brand Is on the Bottom Half of CR's Reliability Rankings

#189

Post by andreskytt »

mrtksn wrote: post #12
kstenerud wrote: post #2

It's interesting to note the difference in communication styles when company PR teams respond to requests for comments. Fiat Chrysler and Chevy both responded in predictable marketroid speak, complete with extensive use of passive voice and grand, hand-wavey platitudes "We care committed to blah blah blah" "Quality is of the greatest importance blah blah blah" "blah blah above industry average blah blah blah" "blah b…

Oh definately, I wonder why these giants cannot replicate the Tesla PR? This is probably Tesla's strongest point, having a problem with the product you paind for and not having personalized response makes you feel powerless while response from someone who seems to understand the problem and the issues it creates is a such a huge difference even if the issue is not resolved. I always forgive companies that did sloppy…

It has proven effectively impossible to sustainably project an incorrect image of a company. It’s not that they can’t do PR, their entire culture looks like that

Re: Every American Car Brand Is on the Bottom Half of CR's Reliability Rankings

#190

Post by rtpg »

Luc wrote: post #40
rtpg wrote: post #5

This is a bit flame bait-y but I really feel like America is getting a super Galapagos effect compared to the rest of the world. Everything is super different and weird and kinda bad, and nobody seems to notice. I go to peoples houses in the US sometimes. Some of these houses are multimillion dollar homes. The doors are all terrible. The plumbing is crap. The furniture just feels bad. The cheapest studio apartment in…

I think there is something to this, but in my experience they just don't care. Their stuff is optimized for their own cultural values, which you perhaps expect to be more like your own than they are. I have had American visitors marvel at the (German built) windows in my French home, calling them something you'd see on a space station. On the other hand they think I must be having money problems for not having a tumb…

I didn’t mention this in my original post and I kinda wish I did now, seeing the replies.

I am American. I grew up in Texas and generally feel at home with other Americans (to a degree, politics is weird).

At times in my life I’ve thought about moving back to the US and I still thought that it was easier to pay the quality of life costs of being a foreigner in other countries (being half illiterate and having a hard time with banking and real estate) rather than deal with the quality of life gap in the US.

My life would not be bad in America, but I feel like it would be less comfortable. In the future the feeling of belongingness might outweigh this, but right now that’s not the case, and it makes me sad

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