Comment by pg_bot | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pg_bot | Hacker News Reader

Wouldn't installing canopy systems be a more cost efficient solution to this problem?

Let's do some math, The dealership listed in the article (Rickenbaugh Automotive Group) currently has ~536 cars listed on their website(s) for sale. I'm going to assume that this number is a little lower than what is actually in inventory given that there are trade-ins and they probably don't restock inventory during the middle of the month. So I will round up to 600 cars to give them wiggle room for expansion and sales. Given their insurance policy is costing them $600k per year we are approximately spending $1,000 per car per year for insurance.

There seem to be companies that make canopies for this exact situation. While I can't find pricing I would have to imagine that the ROI looks pretty attractive given the sheer cost of their insurance and the simplicity of the materials involved in building a canopy. (metal beams and mesh netting)

Why not just solve the problem entirely instead of coming up with an exotic insurance policy?

It's a good idea to solve the problem instead of what the article describes, but there's an issue with canopies.

The types of storms that produce hail, usually supercellular, often have damaging straight-line winds. While out storm chasing, I've seen several gas station canopies collapse from strong winds - I'm struggling to think of a canopy solution that wouldn't have the risk of collapse.

I've also seen a lot of bad construction that catches on wind like a sail. It doesn't have to be built this way, however. A canopy that protects from hail coming from above can still have lots and lots of holes that lets wind go through.

Wind driven hail traveling nearly sideways is common unfortunately. I'm not sure what angle of protection would be the best compromise, but I do know a copy above would not afford 100% protection.

Hmm, I don't think I have experience with such hail. In my experience, the bigger they are and the harder they hit, the more vertical their trajectory. But my area isn't particularly prone to hailstorms.

Allow me to nerd out a little, since my other love besides development is severe weather.

The forward flank downdraft or rear inflow jet of a linear convective system/bow echo can see winds of 50mph+ rather commonly. The more interesting part IMO, is the rear flank downdraft, because it is closely related to tornadogenesis and can also have winds up to 100mph. The RFD is co-located with the hail core in a supercell, so some hail will get caught up in this wind that exists even when there isn't a tornado.

Now terminal velocity of your average baseball-sized hail is roughly 100mph, but you can imagine with 100mph horizontal winds that there can be a strong non-vertical component to the hail in certain portions of the storm. I've personally been hit by smaller 1-2" hail that is traveling nearly horizontal, and I've seen evidence of larger hail impacting at the same angle.

It's a safe assumption that the larger the hail is the more damaging it is, but not all hail is created equal! Depending on how accretion happens and the warmth of the atmosphere, you can have very hard 1" hail that damages cars, and very soft 2.5" hail that doesn't damage cars. My personal rule of thumb is that you need to be wary of anything 1.75"/golf ball or larger.

Having lived in tornado alley, I've seen softball sized hail completely punch through a residential roof (shingles, and plywood) and then punch through the sheetrock in the ceiling.

Maybe a soft one-inch foam canopy secured closely to the vehicle so wind can't catch it, with couple straps under the vehicle chassis? Could that work? Could it be put in place in time?

Alright, that's not really a canopy, more like a shield or body armor.

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Just armchair engineering here:

It wouldn't be hard to make some thick foam mats with straps sewn to them that can be rolled out and fastened to cars in under a minute each. Maybe toss in a couple plastic strips to make it unroll itself like the reverse of a slap koozie. Weather forecasting is pretty good. It's not like you don't have decent warning. You can cover everything out back and leave the cars that are on display out front uncovered until the last minute.

Tossing a mat over a high roof van or large pickup wouldn't be easy but the hordes of crossovers could be well protected.

Alright! StormShield, YC S20, is officially launched! First round starts at $20m!

OK, maybe it does almost sound feasible, but I wonder what someone with outdoor car dealership experience would say? Is this a practical idea? How often do you need to unroll those mats?

Where are you storing the mats also? I can't imagine that they'd be small, even rolled up.

Right, those mats wouldn't be small. They would need lots of storage area.

Maybe a few be stored, rolled up, under vehicles at the back of the lot that are less likely to be moved?

And the rest could be stored indoors. They shouldn't be heavy, so maybe they can be stashed in the ceiling, or somewhere high up out of sight?

-Wouldn't making them inflatable solve much of that problem?

You could even offer a deluxe version with a CO2 cartridge.

Foam would suck up water unfortunately. It'd almost have to be something that was waterproof, dried quickly, and could be stored compactly.

Closed-cell foam is designed to prevent this problem, but at the cost of being stiffer and heavier.

You made a good point, anyway. Foam could absorb water, and air, and get dirty, and smell bad.

If it was low-cost enough, I could imagine it lasting a few months at least! I don't know if hail is a year-round problem or not however

This would also help with snow in the winter! I have to imagine it is a lot of work clearing snow off of cars for test drives, if you could just roll most of it off that would help!

I had this idea. I had a new car in 2014 and I had to park it outdoors for awhile while I was working on a different car in my garage. Anyhow, I didn't want hail damage so I put a car cover over the car, then piled a bunch of cardboard on top, and then threw another car cover over that. It worked until it got really wet, then I had a ton of soggy cardboard to deal with. But it worked as far as protecting the car from hail goes.

I was musing at the time why someone on Amazon wasn't selling some kind of hail protection padded car cover.

I have tons of great ideas, but I never connect on them. Then I watch other people make a fortune off that same idea. Shrug...

I'm not sure you realize the amount of kinetic energy a piece of ice the size of a baseball has at terminal velocity. Short of some sort of thick steel box.

Then you end up insuring your canopies against wind damage... And your cars against the possibility of canopies falling on them. And still insuring your cars against hail in the event that the canopy blows off, or the hail comes down at an angle and isn't fully blocked by the canopy, or whatever.

Also, I'm imagining canopies getting in the way of 1) making inventory highly visible (both from the road and other parts of the lot) and 2) making it harder to pack cars really close together because you have to deal with all the canopy supports.

Just musings...

> I'm struggling to think of a canopy solution that wouldn't have the risk of collapse.

A canopy that isn't solid and allows the wind to pass through. A mesh or screen should do the job. The opening size can also be larger so perhaps even netting with openings upward of a few cm could work.

Exactly. This "God's Joystick" essentially just gives the insurance industry more data to build more accurate risk models. It's essentially pricing the market more perfectly without solving the actual problem itself which is hail.

The article should have pointed out to the reader that this should bring premiums down in areas that have so little chance of hail that it is not worth building physical protection. Right now, the data is not granular enough so insurance companies spread the cost over areas that they shouldn't.

yes because insurance companies are all about minimising profits

Pricing things with a better underlying risk model is likely to lead to more profit, or at least, a more predictable profit.

That's what I said.

I think a thicker padded car cover would be better, something akin to grill covers with a half inch padded lining. You can have them color coded for the type of vehicle. Grey for sedan, black for pickup truck, dark blue for minivan/hatchbacks. When a storm is coming they can just roll them out in a shopping cart and throw them on car by car. You can start a day or two before, covering about 80% of the cars (the ones that are less popular) so you can still be open and selling, and then the day of/before you cover the rest.

old doonas are cheaper, just sew some elastic to them, unless where talking golf ball size hail.

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