Old Teslas Are Falling Apart
Frank Landymore
Sun, 7 December 2025 at 5:45 am GMT-6
3 min read
Want a used car that works? You’d be wise to not get an older Tesla.
In Consumer Reports’ latest ranking for used cars, the Elon Musk-run automaker came dead last in terms of reliability, trailing by over forty points from the top spot on a scale between 0 and 100.
CR’s tests focused on models that are between five to ten years old. Out of 26 tested brands, the two best brands, according to CR’s reliability verdict, are held by Lexus, with a score of 77, and Toyota, with a score of 73. Fellow Japanese automakers Mazda, Honda, and Acura round out the top five with scores between 58 and 53.
Things get dire when US carmakers enter the fray. All but one of the bottom ten brands in the list are American. The best of the worst was Chevrolet at a score of 40. But Tesla makes that failing grade seem respectable with its absolute rock bottom rating of 31, trailing Jeep by just one point.
The embarrassing ranking is a reflection of the automaker’s manufacturing woes and its reputation for questionable quality control. CR calculated the reliability rating based on a survey where users reported problems about their cars, which in all involved more than140,000 cars from the 2016 to 2021 model years. The problems are weighed based on their severity, CR said, and from there, the number of problems each car experiences is compared to the average number of problems for cars of that same model year.
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