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Comment by igamer | Hacker News Reader

As a Tesla owner I found anecdotal evidence of one of the core ideas here: Tesla's just cost more to repair. My wife had some guy back in to the front of our car - she was completely stopped at the time. Parking lot collision and the other guy just wasn't paying attention, "crash" speed was probably < 4MPH. It ended up costing him $13K, although clearly his fault I felt bad for the guy. He managed to crush the instrumentation cluster in the nose and warp the hood and front end (remember, aluminum). Also the redonkulous torque and speed are abound to get some people in trouble, as fun as they are.

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I miss steel bodywork. This kind of "collision" in a 1980s vehicle would require a little hammering to pop out the resulting dent, and a little touch-up paint. Modern cars, it seems like you breathe on them, and they shatter and you're replacing entire quarter-panels or front-end assemblies.

Somebody backed into the front corner of my pickup truck at about 2 mph. Put a little crack into the plastic bumper, that continues into the front quarter panel. I'm glad I don't care about my vehicles looking 100% perfect, as I've no doubt that it'd be in the shop for a week, torn completely apart, and would cost a couple grand. It's ridiculous.

I think this is actually the automation hardware being expensive. If you smack into a car with a normal bumper, everything might be fine, but if its full of radars and lidars, fender benders will be pricey.

I like not getting injured or killed because of crumple zones.

The thing is, modern vehicles are a lot safer, in part because of that crumpling.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=joMK1WZjP7g

As I mentioned elsewhere - if you get in an accident in an old car, you end up with a barely damaged car and a dead driver. In a new car, you end up with destroyed car and a driver without a scratch. I don't mean to be overdramatic, but I would rather have every single part in the front of my car to crumple and turn into dust in a low-speed accident, than get impaled on the steering column just because the frame of the car won't crumple under impact.

the less it crumples, the more you do

I mean, there has to be a happy medium. 5mph collisions won't kill or even injure anyone in any car. There's no reason for a car to take any damage at that speed. But yeah, 35+? Crumple away.

It just seems like it shouldn't have to be either/or. Is material science not advanced enough to find some combination of parts that can sustain a low speed impact with no damage but crumple safely in a higher-speed impact?

> Is material science not advanced enough to find some combination of parts that can sustain a low speed impact with no damage but crumple safely in a higher-speed impact?

For collisions, it's safe for the cabin to be fairly rigid to protect the occupants while crumpling the zones further away to absorb as much of the energy as possible before the impact reaches the soft, mushy humans.

It's a combination of physics and costs. Material science might be advanced enough, but the solution might not make economic sense; but if anyone has it, it would likely be Volvo.

Did you have to take the Tesla to a certified repair shop? If so, that is going to push the insurance rates up when the insurance company cannot use their own favorite body shops.

Yes, because of the unusual materials etc. Regular shop wouldn't have been able to do if they wanted to (and Tesla is picky about verifying shops). To be clear it was easy to find a certified shop, and the entire experience felt well cared for by Tesla as is their rep. But it was a ton of cost (to him) for what amounted to a fender bender.

Wow, I get that a Tesla costs more than the median yearly income in the US, but $13k for a sub-10mph crash seems excessive. Repairs for a similarly priced BMW or Volvo would likely be less, knowing a few people involved in accidents with expensive vehicles like those.

Meanwhile, I'm gonna stick to buying used for less than the cost of your accident :P

> I'm gonna stick to buying used for less than the cost of your accident

The cost here wasn't to the Tesla driver, but to one of the people sharing the road with them without any say in the matter. :)

Part of the cost of an expensive to repair car is an externality on all the other drivers.

Sure, but you end up paying for this directly in the form of insurance increases like this. Additionally, your taking on a large liability, if the car gets damaged in this way and the person who damaged it drives off, or worse yet damaged it without the interaction of another car, you are left footing the bill or reporting it to your insurance (which is another gamble).

I seems like this has the makings of the same racket as healthcare. Eventually, if all car makers start doing the same thing, everyone will end up with highly inflated insurance rates.

...or, the market will reject Tesla, as they will attract even higher costs than average.

It's not so much about Tesla. Tesla is following the same trajectory that a lot of other consumer electronics have. i.e., You go from the PC model to the smartphone SoC model. You do everything in house, cut out dealers, get rid of interoperabilty and throw in some DRM/obfuscation if people try to make aftermarket parts or repair them. Add to that the fact that the govt. will anyway exert more regulatory control with all things autonomous. You end up with a segment that is heavily regulated, with little choice for end-users. Much like healthcare or telecom.

Exactly.

That's pretty clearly a consumer hostile position. Given the extreme competition in the automotive sector and the nation-state interest in their continued success, I'm a long term bear on Tesla.

"It ended up costing him $13K, although clearly his fault I felt bad for the guy."

Wouldn't his liability insurance have paid for damage to another vehicle? I'd expect that the only cost to the driver might be an increase on his insurance premium for having been at fault in a collision.

A $13k claim would make that increase in premium quite significant, though, for a <4 mph ding that would normally be settled by both parties without any insurance involvement.

For comparison, the average "newer used" (1-3 years old) car in 2017 sold for $15374, so a low speed car park ding cost almost as much as destroying a nearly-new car.

1: http://www.mlive.com/business/index.ssf/2016/12/5_things_to_...

In New York, the state minimum is $10k for property damage. Good luck suing the guy carrying that low level of coverage!

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