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Comment by Rebelgecko | Hacker News Reader

I imagine if you're operating on the scale of Hertz it's cheaper to self-insure. Anecdotally it seems like Teslas have higher damage in a collision (eg more expensive and fragile electronics in the bumper) and are more expensive to repair. The last body shop I went to even had a separate hourly rate for Teslas

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Loss of use is is a huge cost for a rental company.

If you rent a vehicle out for $75 per day, and it needs a $1000 repair, and a repair takes 2 weeks, the loss of use is more expensive than the entire repair!

Repair times have been getting longer across the entire automotive industry, as parts availability hasn't been great, but Tesla vehicles are notorious for long wait times for parts availability and availability of the specialized labor sometimes required.

Isn't that just pure gouging? If a Tesla is harder to repair it'll take longer and be more expensive for that reason, no increased hourly rate necessary.

Or... you need a person who is specialized in working on EVs. EVs are still not the majority, so anything different from the norm will need different training, and thusly higher hourly rates to work on them.

When Ford started making putting aluminum bodies on their F150s, they had special training programs for doing bodywork and repair on them. I guarantee that cost was passed down to you.

It may not even take longer to do the repairs, it might take the same amount of time once you learn how to work on them. That said, I guarantee the shops and insurance companies are recuperating the costs of that extra training.

When Ford makes a new car they write a large book on how to repair every body panel on it. For hidden parts how much damage was acceptable before you had to do something. All dealer body shops are required to have book before the dealer can on sell the fist car (along with books and training on other repairs). I believe most body shops don't buy this book, but at the time I worked for a company that made tools and those books were used to decide what special tools we needed to design/make next. I left before Tesla was a thing (2 years before the roadster), so I don't know what Tesla does, but I suspect this is one of those details they didn't realize was important.

If the people with the technical skills/certifications for a particular brand are harder to come by, I think it’s a pretty pure supply/demand thing.

This is pretty common among more expensive brands from what I understand. When I had work done on my Tesla it was the first time I had encounter it, but the couple of repair shops I was referred to by Tesla also had individual hourly rates for BMW, Porsche, Land Rover, etc.

A lot of that is those vehicles require special tools that are expensive. Nearly every car needs a 10mm socket to work on it, so every mechanic has a few and in turn they are cheap. Only VW and BMW need a triple square socket, so they are not common and more expensive, and you only work on a few cars that need that so you have to charge more. Mercedes requires all mechanics have a 4 wheel dynamiter and some repairs require the car be on that for calibration making those repairs more expensive. (Note that I haven't been in the business for 15 years so the above is probably out of date)

Not just more expensive, but much slower (ages to get parts). Every day not rented out is lost money.

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