Consumer Reports' List of Most Satisfying Vehicles Shines A Light On Tesla

Consumer Reports has just released the results of its owner survey looking at which brands owners report liking the most and least. Tesla tops the list for 2021. These most recent results are pulled from Consumer Reports' 2020 Annual Auto Surveys on 369,000 vehicles. Consumer reports says that data from the 2018 to 2020 model years (plus a few 2021 models) were used, as long as a vehicle wasn’t significantly changed over that time. An important part of the results lean on the "The Would Buy Again score". This is rolled up to a percentage of owners who responded “definitely yes” to the question of whether they would buy the same vehicle if they had the chance to buy again. If you received a vehicle survey from Consumer Reports and completed it, you helped to shape these results.

The overall satisfaction score by brand is broken down into five sub-segments for ease of comparison. They include Driving, Comfort, In-Car Electronics, Storage, and Value. Tesla's overall average score of 88 beats some well-known traditional brands by a massive margin. For example, Infiniti owners only rank their vehicles a 48 overall. Cadillac owners 59, and Mercedes Benz 64.

Tesla owners give their car a 5/5 with regard to Driving. However, those same Tesla owners rank their vehicles just 1/5 in Value. Lincoln, Ram, and Chrysler followed Tesla's top score. Toyota scored highest among manufacturers with double-digit models and among brands that offer a full line of vehicles (as opposed to just a few models like Tesla and Ram.)

You can view a summary of the results at Consumer Reports. Members of the subscripiton-funded publicaiton can dig deep and see model and year level results.

John Goreham is a long-time New England Motor Press Association member and recovering engineer. Following his engineering program, John also completed a marketing program at Northeastern University and worked with automotive component manufacturers. In addition to Torque News, John's work has appeared in print in dozens of American newspapers and he provides reviews to many vehicle shopping sites. You can follow John on Twitter, and view his credentials at Linkedin