Trouble for Tesla: Why Consumer Reports Says Its Model S Was ‘Undriveable’
Consumer Reports in 2013 gave the Telsa Model S the highest rating of any vehicle in its history. This year’s review did not go as well for Elon Musk’s company.
The venerable magazine had to delay testing of the company’s newest model because its drivers couldn’t open the doors on the $127,000 sedan, temporarily making the car “undriveable.”
The door handles on the Model S P85 retract automatically and lay flush against the vehicle when they are not in use. Once the vehicle receives a signal from the key fob, the handles move to allow people to grip them. Unfortunately, the door handles stopped working after Consumer Reports testers had the vehicle for 27 days and had driven just over 2,300 miles.
That malfunction caused other problems, the magazine says: “[S]ignificantly, the car wouldn't stay in Drive, perhaps misinterpreting that the door was open due to the issue with the door handle.”
Consumer Reports’ troubles aren’t unique. The non-profit’s car reliability survey found that the Model S has had a far higher than average number of problems with doors, locks and latches, according to the organization’s website.
The testing experience wasn’t all bad, though, because the automaker’s customer service is top notch. A technician was sent to the Consumer Reports Auto Test Center the morning after the problem was reported and quickly diagnosed the problem.
“Our car needed a new door-handle control module — the part inside the door itself that includes the electronic sensors and motors to operate the door handle and open the door,” Consumer Reports says. “The whole repair took about two hours and was covered under the warranty.”
Eric Lyman, vice president of industry insights at TrueCar, told The Fiscal Times that the speed in which Tesla addressed that issue will earn it more kudos from customers who have seen carmakers drag their feet in making needed repairs. The door handle issue isn’t a big deal, he said.
“Telsa is still a relatively new automaker,” he said. “The reality is that we see this kind of thing happen all of the time. This is pretty normal in the course of business in the auto industry.”
The timing of the mishap comes as Telsa is struggling to repair its credibility with Wall Street after the electric vehicle maker’s disappointing earnings performance. Bloomberg News reported last week that the Palo Alto, Calif.-based company might have to raise money because of what one analyst described as its “eye watering” cash burn rate, or else it might run out of money in the next three quarters.
The electric vehicle maker also is facing increased competition from more established rivals. General Motors (GM), for instance, recently unveiled a Chevrolet Bolt concept car that is set to hit the market in 2017 with a projected price of about $30,000 and a battery range of 200 miles. The next generation Nissan Leaf, another electric vehicle, will hit the market at about the same time.
For now, Tesla’s biggest challenge may in convincing consumers to buy electric vehicles while oil remains cheap.
Why Craft Brewers Are Crying in Their Beer
It may be small beer compared to the problems faced by unemployed federal workers and the growing cost for the overall economy, but the ongoing government shutdown is putting a serious crimp in the craft brewing industry. Small-batch brewers tend to produce new products on a regular basis, The Wall Street Journal’s Ruth Simon says, but each new formulation and product label needs to be approved by the Treasury Department’s Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, which is currently closed. So it looks like you’ll have to wait a while to try the new version of Hemperor HPA from Colorado’s New Belgium Brewing, a hoppy brew that will include hemp seeds once the shutdown is over.
Number of the Day: $30 Billion
The amount spent on medical marketing reached $30 billion in 2016, up from $18 billion in 1997, according to a new analysis published in the Journal of the American Medical Association and highlighted by the Associated Press. The number of advertisements for prescription drugs appearing on television, newspapers, websites and elsewhere totaled 5 million in one year, accounting for $6 billion in marketing spending. Direct-to-consumer marketing grew the fastest, rising from $2 billion, or 12 percent of total marketing, to nearly $10 billion, or a third of spending. “Marketing drives more treatments, more testing” that patients don’t always need, Dr. Steven Woloshin, a Dartmouth College health policy expert and co-author of the study, told the AP.
70% of Registered Voters Want a Compromise to End the Shutdown
An overwhelming majority of registered voters say they want the president and Congress to “compromise to avoid prolonging the government shutdown” in a new The Hill-HarrisX poll. Seven in ten respondents said they preferred the parties reach some sort of deal to end the standoff, while 30 percent said it was more important to stick to principles, even if it means keeping parts of the government shutdown. Voters who “strongly approve” of Trump (a slim 21 percent of respondents) favored him sticking to his principles over the wall by a narrow 54 percent-46 percent margin. Voters who “somewhat approve” of the president favored a compromise solution by a 70-30 margin. Among Republicans overall, 61 percent said they wanted a compromise.
The survey of 1,000 registered voters was conducted January 5 and 6 and has a margin of error of 3.1 percentage points.
Share Buybacks Soar to Record $1 Trillion
Although there may be plenty of things in the GOP tax bill to complain about, critics can’t say it didn’t work – at least as far as stock buybacks go. TrimTabs Investment Research said Monday that U.S. companies have now announced $1 trillion in share buybacks in 2018, surpassing the record of $781 billion set in 2015. "It's no coincidence," said TrimTabs' David Santschi. "A lot of the buybacks are because of the tax law. Companies have more cash to pump up the stock price."
Chart of the Day: Deficits Rising
Budget deficits normally rise during recessions and fall when the economy is growing, but that’s not the case today. Deficits are rising sharply despite robust economic growth, increasing from $666 billion in 2017 to an estimated $970 billion in 2019, with $1 trillion annual deficits expected for years after that.
As the deficit hawks at the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget point out in a blog post Thursday, “the deficit has never been this high when the economy was this strong … And never in modern U.S. history have deficits been so high outside of a war or recession (or their aftermath).” The chart above shows just how unusual the current deficit path is when measured as a percentage of GDP.