which says that Tesla is the 4th best auto manufacturer in terms of recall rate at .936, which is better than the industry average of 1.115; Ford is at 1.139, This was in 2016, when Tesla had only been shipping relatively small volumes of cars. If recent articles which put Tesla's recall rate at 0.25 are to be believed (I'm not sure that they should; they seem to carry the tone that this recall rate is exceptionally bad), that would certainly make Tesla the least-recalled car brand.
Their metric of "problems per 100 vehicles" is not very well correlated with what we think of as vehicle quality. If your phone won't pair with car's bluetooth, that's considered just as much of a problem as the drivetrain failing. In their survey summary, they even admit that most issues are with infotainment systems due to things like, "not enough power plugs/USB ports". That's how they manage to claim that the highest quality vehicles are made by Buick and Dodge, not brands like Honda and Audi.
Also J.D. Power is pay to play.[1] From the WSJ[2]:
> Each year, J.D. Power & Associates gives out quality awards based on surveys of thousands of new-car owners. It sells the results to auto makers and charges licensing fees for using the survey's rankings in marketing and ad campaigns. According to one car maker, J.D. Power charges as much as $300,000 for copies of a survey, and the same amount to use the awards in ads. J.D. Power declined to confirm its charges.
which says that Tesla is the 4th best auto manufacturer in terms of recall rate at .936, which is better than the industry average of 1.115; Ford is at 1.139, This was in 2016, when Tesla had only been shipping relatively small volumes of cars. If recent articles which put Tesla's recall rate at 0.25 are to be believed (I'm not sure that they should; they seem to carry the tone that this recall rate is exceptionally bad), that would certainly make Tesla the least-recalled car brand.