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Comment by kotaKat | Hacker News Reader

I half-thought about one of these just to have something to rip around in.

Until a colleague in a Model Y hit a turkey and the very minor front end damage turned into a $9000 insurance claim.

I don't want to buy a $20k used Tesla and immediately run into a 4-5 figure repair as soon as one minor thing goes horribly wrong, even with insurance.

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My US friends share with me that car repair costs have followed inflation and not general population wage growth (unfortunately, mechanics other than independent mechanics likely aren't seeing a commensurate increase in invoice bottom lines). Unless you wrench it yourself, on some vehicle like an old 80-90's diesel pickup, 4 figures invoices are common now.

Switching to a 15 year old pickup that I could repair myself was the single best financial choice I made in the past 2 years.

How often do you need to repair your vehicle? I bought a new car at the end of 2022 and haven't had to bring it into the shop at all except to get some new tires, and I've put 30k miles on it so far.

That's pretty much any new car today. Modern cars are pretty safe, but at the expense of damage to the car itself.

For a frontal collision with a larger object maybe this true but with a turkey? It seems the dammage is a bit excessive for that

It depends how fast the turkey was going when it hit you.

Not to mention what it was travelling in. SUVs are absolute tanks these days.

too many gas gobblers on the road these days

We had a minor 10 km/h collision in my wife’s SUV (non-Tesla). To me it looked like it would just be a minor bumper respray and realignment of some panels.

Unfortunately the parking sensors were damaged too, so it’s a few grand to repair.

That doesn't sound right. Maybe they got a very cheap insurance policy with ultra high deductibles for collision and UMP. That would be a $1500 job for me, at most.

Nah, not when it takes out one of the headlights and they've gotta swap in the brand new matrix headlights on both sides to replace them, plus the big unibody front bumper, plus misc sensors...

Apparently parts availability also forced unintentional upgrades.

But that's the whole point of the deductible. Any costs beyond it are covered by the insurer. This is one reason why GEICO dropped Cybertruck coverage in some states.

Is this specifically because Teslas can only repaired by the dealer? They aren't rare cars and presumably there are many in junkyards that can be stripped for parts.

Not too many teslas in junkyards yet. And they don't have dealers.

Teslas can be repaired at many body shops. Mine has.

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