Tesla tied with Mercedes-Benz for first place in the luxury vehicle category in the 2024 American Consumer Satisfaction Index (ACSI), maintaining a stable position and building a reputation for improving its complaint handling.
Tesla and Mercedes-Benz were tied this year with a score of 83. Tesla’s score remained unchanged, while Mercedes-Benz improved by 4 percentage points from 2023, mainly due to customer satisfaction with its hybrid-electric vehicles.
Tesla’s score remained unchanged, but that doesn’t mean consumers’ opinions are the same as they were last year: ACSI noted in the study that Tesla’s pricing strategy has helped improve value perceptions and that its complaint handling has improved.
ACSI research continues:
“Tesla’s pricing strategy may be helping to improve value perceptions, but its improved complaints handling appears to have offset some of the customer concerns in other areas over the past year. Tesla is looking to leverage its reputation for customer satisfaction as it seeks to expand its market with the lower-priced Model 2 and robotaxis.”
In last year’s survey, Tesla tied with Toyota and Lexus for first place overall, but this year the brand’s score dropped by one percentage point.
Overall
Overall, luxury car brands did not see any improvement in any of the industry trends, with both mobile app reliability and comfort dropping below last year’s figures.
Other categories remained stable.
Who is your most satisfied driver?
The study broke down consumer satisfaction by fuel type for the first time in the 2024 report.
The data shows that drivers of hybrid electric vehicles are more satisfied than any other fuel source across the overall, mass market, and luxury vehicle categories. Hybrid vehicles have had a major disruptive effect on the automotive industry over the past year.
Tesla even mentioned in its early shareholder materials that consumer interest is shifting specifically to these powertrains, and that automakers are focusing on building them out.
“Global EV sales remain under pressure as many automakers prioritize hybrids over EVs. While this is positive for our regulated credit business, we want to see the industry continue to drive EV adoption, which is aligned with our mission. To support growth, we have increased awareness and expanded our vehicle financing programs, including attractive lease terms for our customers.”
Tesla is also making a big impact on satisfaction in the luxury car segment when comparing EVs and hybrids.
“In the luxury segment, the ACSI difference between hybrids and electric cars is four points overall (84 and 80, respectively), but that difference is somewhat minimized by Tesla’s ACSI performance. If you remove Tesla from the calculation, the ACSI difference between hybrids and electric cars jumps to seven points for luxury customers.”
We’d love to hear from you – if you have any comments, concerns or questions, please email us at joey@teslarati.com or reach out to us on Twitter. Cleander JoeyOr, if you have a news tip, email us at tips@teslarati.com.
Tesla and Mercedes-Benz top luxury car customer satisfaction index