Comment by hn_throwaway_99 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by hn_throwaway_99 | Hacker News Reader

hn_throwaway_99

Gave this story a "tentative upvote", because I feel the tone and some of the other topics the author mentioned have the potential to steer any discussion into a political mess, but I am genuinely interested in the real engineering concerns regarding the Cybertruck.

The author is basically arguing "large, completely flat metal panels that join in long, angular seams is a fatal design flaw that is unfixable." I.e. they say this design will lead to major problems ("oil-canning", seam gaps, and making repairs even more of a non-starter), and the possible fixes will either be gargantuanly expensive or have other problems (lots of added weight). Can someone versed in this area comment on this? At first glance he does appear to make great points, so I'd like to know if there is something I'm missing.

I think automakers are really going to have to come to terms with repairability costs or else people will start balking at insane insurance costs. There have been a bunch of articles on HN recently about how minor impacts on EVs are leading to crazy repair bills, like the 41k Rivian repair. If it costs 15k to fix a minor door ding on a Cybertruck, I can't fathom what insurers will charge for comprehensive or collision coverage.

Dude managed to work seven distinct flamebait tangents into one article. It’s really something. Throw climate change and bicycles into the mix and you’ve basically completed HN flame war bingo.

Honestly, I wish there was an insurance option that wouldn’t cover cosmetic damage. If your car has some cracks in the plastic body panels, repairing it is completely unnecessary. Desirable, maybe, but irrelevant to whether or not a car is still drivable vs. salvage.

You can just not claim those and keep your no-claim bonus. In fact, it's probably cheaper to not claim anything you can afford to pay yourself, if your no claims bonus is intact.

The purpose of your insurance is to pay for damage caused by you to other people's cars, so it's not really up to you whether you think cosmetic damage is important or not.

(Personally, I think this is quite "regressive", in that the poor have to pay to cover potential damage to cars much more expensive than their own. It would work better if insurance was completely optional and only paid for damage to your own car, whether caused by yourself or others. That way you would have a lot more control over how much you want to pay and how much risk you want to take on).

> The purpose of your insurance is to pay for damage caused by you to other people's cars

Liability insurance’s purpose is to pay for damage caused by you and your car to other people’s bodies and property due to your negligence. Cars damage other things beyond simply other cars.

> Personally, I think this is quite "regressive", in that the poor have to pay to cover potential damage to cars much more expensive than their own.

Only damage that they have been found responsible for having caused. People of any income level who make a habit of causing extensive damage to expensive cars belonging to other drivers probably should pay increased insurance rates to cover the damages they cause (or become functionally uninsurable).

> It would work better if insurance was completely optional and only paid for damage to your own car, whether caused by yourself or others. That way you would have a lot more control over how much you want to pay and how much risk you want to take on).

Again, that does nothing to cover the damage your car does to, for example, pedestrians, passengers in other vehicles, signs, mailboxes, or any of the other variety of things cars can damage.

While the post you are replying to is completely wrong (as someone else pointed out they appear to never have heard of comprehensive or collision insurance), I think it's fair to have a debate about whether property damage liability should be capped on the roads.

That is, if I decide to drive a car where the bumper is made of Fabergé eggs, and someone dings my bumper, why should they have to pay me a couple million to replace my couple broken Fabergé eggs? Obviously that's a fake example, but is that really much different from having to pay extreme amounts to fix someone's Lamborghini or Bugatti? It seems more rational to me to conclude that people driving insanely expensive cars on public roads are taking ill-advised risks and should need to shoulder more of that risk.

I know you’re saying it’s a fake example, but it seems perfectly reasonable as an equivalence.

Especially when you discover that many super cars are actually using commodity components but then literally just charging 10x for them (I recall someone showing Lamborghini or Ferrari parts that literally had other brands stamped on them).

Have you never heard of comprehensive or uninsured motorist coverage?

In general the legal mandatory insurance is to cover damage you cause to other cars.

But many people have insurance for their vehicles to cover damage done where the culprit is uninsured, under insured, or simply can’t be found. Third party insurance leaves you out of pocket in those cases, and even if you do find the culprit if they have no assets either you can’t even use a lawsuit to reclaim the damages.

Imagine the repair cost on a EV sports car like the Rimac Nevara ~ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xsVtnvmmzlQ

I think the final decision on the Cybertruck will come from insurance companies.

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