Tesla and its fans and investors endured some major turbulence in 2022. Between legal challenges over the safety of the firm’s driver-assistance tech, a plummeting share price, CEO Elon Musk’s farcical Twitter takeover, and the launch of EVs from other automakers, it’s easy to see why some Tesla buyers might have jumped ship in the last 12 months.
But it seems the number that did head for BMW and Mercedes-branded lifeboats wasn’t as big as Tesla might have feared because Tesla has just beaten every other carmaker in a prestigious brand loyalty study for the first time ever.
The EV firm came first in the ‘Overall Loyalty To Make’ category of the S&P Global Mobility 2022 Automotive Loyalty Awards, dethroning Ford, whose 2021 victory was a twelfth straight win for the Blue Oval. Tesla also walked away with an award for ‘Highest Conquest Percentage’ in a period where industry-wide supply problems largely caused by the semiconductor crisis had resulted in a general reduction in levels of loyalty from 54.6 percent in 2019 to 50.2 percent in 2022.
“The past three years have been a challenge for the automotive industry,” said Joe LaFeir, President, Automotive Insights, S&P Global Mobility. “As customers are returning back to market post pandemic and inventory levels have slowly improved from last year’s lows, retaining loyal customers has been more challenging than ever before.”
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Part of Tesla’s success was down to its appeal to increasingly important ethnic consumers, S&P Global Mobility said, which also explains Tesla’s win in the ‘Ethnic Market Loyalty to Make’ category, while the marque’s Model Y and Model 3 also won loyalty awards in the ‘Small SUV’ and ‘Small Luxury Car’ classes.
General Motors won the award for overall loyalty to manufacturers for the eighth consecutive year, notching up its 19th win in 27 years in the process, and though Ford was knocked off the makes list by Tesla, its F-Series truck did hang on to the light duty truck loyalty award. In another consolation prize for Ford, the Lincoln Nautilus proved its owners can’t get enough of the luxury mid-size SUV.
The study also revealed how much Subaru owners love their local dealers. The brand won the ‘Overall Loyalty to Dealer’ category, with data showing that almost 40 percent of Subaru owners buy their next car from the same showroom where they picked up their current vehicle.