Tesla Jumps Over 12 Brands In New 2025 J.D. Power Dependability Rankings to Move From Nearly Last to Almost Average Overall, and Nobody Noticed - Not Even J.D. Power

One big reason not to buy a Tesla before 2025 was the brand’s overall poor reputation for quality, durability, and reliability. Oh, we know that owners love their vehicles. Tesla always ranks very highly when it comes to owner satisfaction. The past owners would watch with pride as their pricey EV was towed away or worked on by a Ranger service van. The big news this month is that Tesla has jumped from the bottom to the middle of the pack when it comes to dependability. 

Tesla’s 2025 J.D. Power Vehicle Dependability Study Rating
We’ll explain some things about the J.D. Vehicle Power Dependability Study Rating in a moment, but let’s get right to the change. For 2025, Tesla scores 209 on the VDS study, a massive improvement over its score of 252 in 2024, and 242 in 2023. 

A Lower score is better and that means Tesla is now ranked above Mercedes-Benz, Audi, Acura, Genesis, and Subaru to name just a few. The chart tells the tale to some degree. With the overall industry average of 202, Tesla is now within striking distance of passing Honda in next year’s rankings if things continue to go well for Tesla in dependability. 

What Is the 2025 J.D. Power Vehicle Dependability Study Rating?
J.D. Power conducts a lot of studies. Its goal is to allow people on social media whose favorite brands score poorly to vent in comments and say the group is corrupt. It also allows the same folks to proclaim that their choice of brand makes them super smart when their brand scores highly. OK, kidding aside, this particular study looks at the problems reported by owners of three-year-old cars. Get it? Not brand new cars. They have a different study for that. These folks are all about studies. 

See the 9 separate categories that J.D. Power evaluated for this report in this video from the Torque News Youtube channel.

Now, in case you are not aware of this, Tesla is downright hostile to groups like J.D. Power, NADA, IIHS, and all the rest of the industry groups striving to produce useful information consumers can use to judge how cars match up when shopping. Tesla won’t play nicely with J.D. Power and give the brand access to customer lists in all the states, so it gets an asterisk next to its brand, and J.D. Power puts the Tesla ranking below all the rest of the brands, who do cooperate. Still, the group does its best to include this bad-boy brand despite its resistance. 

What Does the 2025 J.D. Power Dependability Study Measure
Now, if you are an armchair critic of any automotive data you find online, you are likely all ready to fire off a comment like, “Yeah, but this study doesn’t weigh the big problems properly, so little things that can be fixed with over the air updates make Tesla score lower.” Sorry. The folks at J.D. Power understand all that, and they shape the detailed study results in a way that helps automakers (and owners) understand how the problems reported impact these particular aspects of vehicle ownership:

• The influence of problems on owners’ overall satisfaction with their vehicle
• The types of problems owners consider most bothersome
• Problems that have the greatest negative impact on loyalty
• Major components that are replaced during the first 3 years of ownership

Nine separate categories are evaluated. Here they are:

1. Climate
2. Driving Assistance
3. The Driving Experience
4. Exterior
5. Features/Controls/Displays
6. Infotainment
7. Interior
8. Powertrain
9. Seats

Our Take On Tesla’s Improving Dependability
Tesla is no longer a “startup,” and it is really not a young company anymore. What Tesla has become is a brand that makes two models, the Y and 3, in massive volumes and barely anything else. It trickles out some X and S vehicles. The 2022 model year Y and 3 vehicles looked at in this study were not new and had been on the market for a few years. The smart folks in Texas and California who make Tesla vehicles had a chance to fix the early problems and continuously improve the two models that they make the most. If any X and S owners are included in the survey, they likely help. Those models are older than dust now. 

J.D. Power mentions this type of effect in its study, saying,

New model launches struggle: Of the 27 new models that launched in the 2022 model year, only four have performed better than their segment average for dependability in the 2025 VDS. New models launched in 2022 average 241 PP100 in the 2025 VDS, whereas carryover models have 196 PP100 and perform better in all nine vehicle categories.

The Cybertruck is going to hurt the Tesla rankings a bit in a few years, just like all-new models hurt all brands to some degree. This is one reason Toyota and Lexus always do so well. They keep models longer, make smaller changes, and Toyota rocks the dependability study like nobody’s business. 

Tesla has another ace up its sleeve when it comes to the Vehicle Dependability Study. Every year, the study finds that software problems are the most common, most nagging, and most reported. In particular, a lot of folks can’t seem to pair an Android to Android Auto or their iPhone to Apple CarPlay. Tesla owners can’t report issues related to these specific apps because Tesla does not offer the feature in any of its models. By avoiding a popular feature, Tesla helps its numbers a bit in this study. 

We still can’t help you if you think Elon Musk is a terrible person or if you are in favor of government waste, fraud, and Abuse. But for 2025, Tesla made a big move when it comes to one thing that held the brand back before that cringey salute. 

Note: Nowhere in the J.D. Power press release for this study did we find any mention of Tesla’s rise. To be sure we didn’t miss any mentions, we conducted a “Ctrl F” search, and the only time the word Tesla appears is at the bottom next to its resulting score. We find that odd. Do you?

Do you think that Tesla will continue to do better on studies like this?

John Goreham is a credentialed New England Motor Press Association member and expert vehicle tester. John completed an engineering program with a focus on electric vehicles, followed by two decades of work in high-tech, biopharma, and the automotive supply chain before becoming a news contributor. He is a member of the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE int). In addition to his eleven years of work at Torque News, John has published thousands of articles and reviews at American news outlets. He is known for offering unfiltered opinions on vehicle topics. You can connect with John on Linkedin and follow his work on his personal X channel or on our X channel. Please note that stories carrying John's by-line are never AI-generated, but he does employ grammar and punctuation software when proofreading and he also uses image generation tools. 

Top of Page image of Tesla dealership shows Model Y, Model X, and Model 3 along with Roadster taken by John Goreham. Image of 2025 and 2024 VDS charts courtesy of J.D. Power.