Tesla Tops Reliability Study in France

Support CleanTechnica’s work through a Substack subscription or on Stripe.

Tesla has not been known as the king of reliability. To the contrary, it has been known to score badly in a variety of reliability studies in the US and Germany. It has gotten better over the years, though. And a new auto reliability study in France actually finds it topping the charts.

Passing up Toyota in the ranking by French magazine Auto Plus, after not being classified at all in previous years, Tesla was identified as having the least early problems of all the automakers examined in 2025. The analysis concerned cars registered since January 1, 2018, that have fewer than 150,000 kilometers on the odometer.

Except for “suspension arm issues, no recurring problems have been reported,” the analysis found, and those are covered under Tesla’s 4-year or 80,000 km warranty. Some other minor issues were occasionally identified — computer glitches and door handle issues — but they were apparently not seen as consistent or serious issues, at least not compared to the issues identified in other brands’ autos.

Here is how the ranking was represented by the French magazine:

Yeah, I also didn’t learn enough French to make much sense of that, but thanks to Bertrand Moreau for sharing.

EV enthusiasts have long argued that the much simpler powertrains of electric vehicles should mean they break less, and have fewer maintenance and reliability needs. This study seems to back up that point. Though, it would be nice if we also got more information on the reliability of other auto brands’ EV models versus non-EV models.

Support CleanTechnica via Kickstarter