Best time to buy a Tesla is at the start of production, says Musk

Tesla has received poor reliability reviews in the past years, and Musk blames the race to production

As Tesla cars are often at the receiving end of criticism when it comes to quality control, CEO Elon Musk, in an interview with auto expert Sandy Munro, pinpointed the best time to buy a Tesla car.

“Friends ask me, when should they buy a Tesla. Well, either buy it right at the beginning or when production reaches a steady state. But during that production ramp, it is super hard to be in vertical climb mode and get everything right on the little details. It is just a super difficult thing,” Musk said.

He added that customers who want “things to be dialed” should buy either an early model or a car built after the “production has leveled off”.

Munro is one of Tesla’s most vocal critics. He had once compared the Tesla 2018 Model 3 to a Kia from the 1990s. He had evaluated two Model 3 sedans made two months apart and they were vastly different in their build.

Even in a recent Consumer Reports reliability survey, Tesla was at the bottom of the list among 29 brands in the US market. This survey analyses which car will give owners fewer or more problems than their competitors and Tesla seemed to be a cause of complaint about many of its loyal users.

The EV company, which saw a rally in the stock markets all through 2020, had been aggressively pushing its 500,000 vehicles’ sales target which it missed only by a few hundred. Musk stated that it is this racing to finish production which impacts the quality.

One of the problems, Musk said, the company faced was that paint on the cars wasn’t drying enough.

“Prototypes are easy and fun, and then reaching volume production with a reliable product at an affordable price is excruciatingly difficult. Our production is hell,” he told Munro.