More Good News for Tesla - Top 5 In Customer Perception

The annual consumer perception survey from Consumer Reports came out in February, and a new name has jumped into the top 5 best automakers list - Tesla, the electric car maker.

Yes, these are great times to be associated with Tesla.

Consumer Reports has given Tesla some significant traction in the marketplace when it was announced that, in the annual survey, Tesla had made the jump from 11th to 5th among consumers surveyed as to their ranking of car brand attributes including quality, safety, value, design and technology.

This follows the magazine's review in May 2013 of the new Tesla Model S the joint-highest score ever given to any vehicle it has reviewed up to this point. Immediately before that, Tesla had announced its first ever quarterly profit, after being in the red for its entire ten year existence.

All of this great news has really been a boon for Tesla stock, which has tripled since its big month of May, now trading (as of February 2014) at $178 a share.

Lofty Company

So who else joins Tesla as the best-perceived car makers in the market? The names you're probably familiar with - Toyota, Ford, Honda and Chevy, in that order. Tesla displaced Mercedes Benz in the top five, with the German automakers falling to 7th, behind both Tesla and another new riser, Subaru.

39 automakers comprised the survey results. Which ones were average and who was the worst? 

The median companies in 19th and 20th place were......Volkswagon and Hyundai.

The five lowest scores in the survey were Scion, Rolls Royce (!), Jaguar, Maserati, and the lowest scoring company of all.....Land Rover.  Something tells me that what hurt a number of those was an excessive price tag relative to the quality received in the minds of the consumers answering the survey.

^{Image source: Tesla Motors}