So, ten days ago my beloved 2014 P85D with 115,000 miles on it met it's untimely demise at 75mph at the hands of a semi-trailer who decided that to change lanes at the exact moment i was starting to pass him. I am reasonably confident of that sequence of events, as you can see left-rear truck tire rubber melted quite nicely on the front bumper underneath my right headlight. I believe the body of the trailer must have actually cleared the hood, but then smashed the "A" column and/or the door simultaneously. This happened in the I-5 northbound, just north of Corning CA, a route the Tesla and I have literally traversed hundreds of times - probably more than 75,000 miles of that Tesla were commuting once a week between the Bay Area and Redding. I know the Corning, Williams, Vacaville and Fairfield superchargers pretty intimately
A comment and a question
First of all, what happened seems fairly extraordinary - i was unexpectedly struck hard and high from the side by a vehicle with massively more force and momentum than mine, and the Tesla didn't even really budge. The timing was clearly fortuitous - a fraction of a second later and his rear wheel(s) would have also stuck my car body low from the side (instead of spinning against the front bumper) at the same moment the trailer was hitting high into the body. I suspect that would have been far worse. Nonethless, my very rudimentary understanding of physics says that an ICE car - with the preponderance of its weight high up in the front of the car as opposed to distributed evenly across the floor - almost certainly would have spun out at the least and probably worse. I had this moment of realization - as my passenger door exploded in at me - that i was likely about to be in some kind of out of control situation . . . and it just didn't happen. I attribute it to to weight distribution and possibly the autopilot software (which to be clear, was on) which i strongly suspect compensated for the change of vector. Because when i recovered from the "WTF just happened??!!" sensation a couple seconds later, the Model S was basically in it's lane, still driving down the down the road with the door hanging off. Whereupon, i simply pulled over into the median (see picture #1).
Obviously, if i had a passenger, this would be a VERY different story. But thankfully, I was solo.
Now my question. My insurance company has made what feels like a fairly generous settlement offer and I am obviously going to take it. It's not enough to buy a new Plaid, but I could get a 3 or a Y, give or take, so will have to weigh options, given the long lead time there seems to be for the new build S's and X's. Yes, part of me now really wants to wait for a Cybertruck! However, I inquired about buying the vehicle back for salvage value and the number that came in was $12K. Given that i don't think ANYTHING mechanical was impacted by the incident, I fully understand that it's a relatively high salvage value. But the one piece that genuinely intrigues me is the battery - after 6.5 years, it was down about 15% from original capacity, but it could theoretically still be the basis of a very large home battery system, which is in the medium term plan. If retrofitting a Model S battery for home use been done by anybody, I would really appreciate getting pointed that direction, as i need to make my decision on this in a couple days.
A comment and a question
First of all, what happened seems fairly extraordinary - i was unexpectedly struck hard and high from the side by a vehicle with massively more force and momentum than mine, and the Tesla didn't even really budge. The timing was clearly fortuitous - a fraction of a second later and his rear wheel(s) would have also stuck my car body low from the side (instead of spinning against the front bumper) at the same moment the trailer was hitting high into the body. I suspect that would have been far worse. Nonethless, my very rudimentary understanding of physics says that an ICE car - with the preponderance of its weight high up in the front of the car as opposed to distributed evenly across the floor - almost certainly would have spun out at the least and probably worse. I had this moment of realization - as my passenger door exploded in at me - that i was likely about to be in some kind of out of control situation . . . and it just didn't happen. I attribute it to to weight distribution and possibly the autopilot software (which to be clear, was on) which i strongly suspect compensated for the change of vector. Because when i recovered from the "WTF just happened??!!" sensation a couple seconds later, the Model S was basically in it's lane, still driving down the down the road with the door hanging off. Whereupon, i simply pulled over into the median (see picture #1).
Obviously, if i had a passenger, this would be a VERY different story. But thankfully, I was solo.
Now my question. My insurance company has made what feels like a fairly generous settlement offer and I am obviously going to take it. It's not enough to buy a new Plaid, but I could get a 3 or a Y, give or take, so will have to weigh options, given the long lead time there seems to be for the new build S's and X's. Yes, part of me now really wants to wait for a Cybertruck! However, I inquired about buying the vehicle back for salvage value and the number that came in was $12K. Given that i don't think ANYTHING mechanical was impacted by the incident, I fully understand that it's a relatively high salvage value. But the one piece that genuinely intrigues me is the battery - after 6.5 years, it was down about 15% from original capacity, but it could theoretically still be the basis of a very large home battery system, which is in the medium term plan. If retrofitting a Model S battery for home use been done by anybody, I would really appreciate getting pointed that direction, as i need to make my decision on this in a couple days.
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