Not to defend Tesla but lol, you should look up your state's lemon laws and see how many cars are repurchased/etc due to being certifiably lemons. Jaguar and Jeep for example? Jaguars especially for being a 'luxury' brand, were/are notorious for having various electrical issues or shitting the bed after 20k miles, but they're still around today.
Those aren't absolute numbers - just the ones that were actually repurchased by the manufacturer due to the lemon laws. You could probably multiply the numbers by 10 and get a more 'accurate' number of the lemons but not every car that IS a lemon will actually get marked as such. same thing with lemon law court cases - not every manufacturer may get sued for producing lemons provided they're honoring warranties and repairs. But either way, I do see what you're saying so here:
Tesla Motors primarily sells vehicles directly to consumers and its case numbers may be affected by its use of arbitration, see page 21.
page 21
there are millions more seriously defective vehicles being driven on California’s freeways
than court records capture. Another important reason for this gap is the use of a rigged, privatized system called “arbi-tration” that allows automakers to avoid accountability under consumer protec-
tion laws.67 Differences in the frequency with which lemon disputes find their way to arbitration may be one factor in variations in Lemon Law cases across manufacturers, particularly for Tesla.
because the company is uniquely able to avoid Lemon Law litigation by imposing arbitration on its customers, the relatively low number of lemon cases filed in relation to Tesla’s market share should not necessarily be taken as an indicator of superior vehicle quality.
lmao
It's an imperfect measurement at best, although I was pleasantly surprised to learn while reading this that California's lemon law applies to motorcycles as well. Neat!
Yeah I wasn't trying to say that Tesla has a low number of lemons or anything like that - only pointing out that car manufacturers in general tend to produce a lot of shit vehicles that are dangerous for one reason or another. If every Ford and Tesla was taken off the road, they'd probably be a ton safer in general LOL