Hacker News Reader

Comment by jfghi | Hacker News Reader

Private insurance companies charge higher amounts for insuring Teslas as their repair costs are much higher than a majority of cars on the road.

View on HN

In the UK, the main expense is a hire car for several months and legal expenses for when that nice chap you had a slight collision with claims he and all his 4 friends suffered whiplash injuries.

What car you drive and how much it costs to fix are pretty much irrelevant.

In the US at least, coverages for liability and damages are split. The liability costs would be the same for similar sizes of car whereas damage costs would be much higher for a car that’s expensive to repair.

No more so than any other car of the same price, in my experience. I mean, yes, Teslas are expensive so collision coverage is expensive. But no, they're not particularly expensive to repair in context.

How about for the main battery replacement? How often does that occur?

Does “in your experience” refer to you actually seeing repair bills for Tesla? What I’ve heard is their exterior design is more heavily complex single components vs a more panel-based approach, and the exterior is all aluminum which can’t be repaired in the same way. I’ve also read that repair parts are ridiculously expensive from Tesla. Here is a recent article about this issue:

https://www.autoblog.com/amp/2023/01/27/tesla-expensive-to-r...

> Does “in your experience” refer to you actually seeing repair bills for Tesla

Yes.

> What I’ve heard

Pretty much, yeah. That's how this always goes.

Model S is aluminum but Model 3 is all steel.

I've only needed one repair of my Model 3: a new side mirror and it was about $725 CDN in parts. My insurance wasn't able to secure the part and going through tesla directly it took about a month before the part was available. On the plus side the part was replaced right in my driveway in under 15 minutes by Tesla mobile service.

I’m not in this space so can’t vouch for this but I remember recently reading an article that for even more minor scratch and dents EVs are occasionally totaled as insurance company can’t guarantee battery system wasn’t somehow affected and wouldn’t catastrophically fail.

“ Reusing a battery from an EV that was in a collision requires mechanics to check the battery’s diagnostic data to make sure it’s functional and safe — and Tesla doesn’t let third parties look at that date. Insurance companies are unwilling to use these recycled battery packs for fear of the repaired or repurposed units causing problems later on, per Reuters:”

Source: https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2023/03/a-minor-crash-can-total-a...

[2]https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.reuters.com%2Fbusi...

That's... just not correct. Source: have repaired multiple scratches and dents in a Tesla under insurance coverage without unreasonable costs, much less a total refund.

FWIW: that article isn't about insurance coverage at all, so I don't understand why you're citing it. Tesla licenses auto body shops to do repairs and gives them the needed tools just like every other auto maker. The article is complaining that unlicensed shops don't have the tools, making repairs more expensive. And that's true, as far as it goes, but it's hardly a problem unique to one manufacturer.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com