Agreed - very sorry about the accident! (and glad no one was hurt)
I certainly know the feeling as I too had a fender bender recently...mostly my fault. 5 way intersection, fast stop of the car in front of me on the far side of the intersection and I did not react fast enough. Anyway, here is my accident story for what I thought was relatively minor (but painful to look at) damage:
The damage was only on the front driver's side. The frunk latched and opened fine but I did notice the hood was slightly off alignment. The nose cone would definitely need replacing, but did not seem like too much was impacted behind it.
This is what happened as I went slightly "under" an old Jeep Cherokee. Notice the slight scratches to his bumper and the bent tailpipe that took out my nosecone:
No one was hurt but it sure ruined my day and started a month long exercise in frustration... After exchanging info I called my insurance company (Allstate) to get the claim going. They got all the info and scheduled an appointment to get an estimate. I called Tesla to ask for a recommended body shop which they quickly stated as Bel Red Auto-rebuild. I went over there to get their estimate on the damage and was (sad but) comforted to see two other Tesla's in the parking lot also getting body repairs. After Erik looked over the damage and said it would be no problem fixing it as they get parts quickly from Tesla. My jaw then hit the floor as he said it would be about $10,000 to repair!! He said that the hood would need replacing (which I knew) but also stated that it was likely some structural aluminum frame component was bent and that Tesla has told all repair shops to do a full replacement of that part even if only minor damage.
Things got worse when I took the car in to the Allstate assessment location. The guy looked the car over, took a bunch of pictures, then told me that his system had no clue as to how much the repairs would be for this car. I told him I had an estimate from the shop which he took, made a copy of, then generated a report for me. He said he wrote down an estimate of $1 and told me to go ahead and take it to the shop and Allstate would just go off what the body shop had. Hmmm...
I should have been more questioning but figured these guys knew what they were doing and I took it to the body shop and dropped it off. I gave the body shop all the info including the Allstate claim number and was told not to worry, that they would take care of everything and it would probably take about a week and a half to finish.
That was the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. After enjoying some time off with the family, I figured I would call the body shop back on the following Monday (12/2) to see if by some miracle the car was finished early - even with the holiday in there (man I was missing my car!!). After getting a hold of the body shop, Erik told me they had not yet received approval from Allstate to move forward with the repairs (much less ordering the parts from the factory) and my car had just been sitting there taken apart for a week with neither Allstate or Bel Red Auto letting me know!!
I called my Allstate rep who tracked down the issue and it turned out that two key things had happened: 1) the $10 estimate from the body shop tripped some $$ amount that required a "good" Allstate assessment person to come look at the car and 2) the guy I hit had filed a personal injury claim which caused the claim to be transferred between people and subsequently was dropped on the floor. I was MOST upset about the injury claim. OMG!! The accident was probably less than 5MPH and I stood there talking with the guy for over an hour and he made it clear there was no injury, just concern on his part of losing $$ or perhaps his job at the window cleaning company he worked for. We were all set to leave after exchanging info but he asked if we could get a police report so he could have a formal document to show work why he was not on the clock. I felt bad for him as it was mostly my fault and waited another 40 minutes for the police to come and fill out a report (oh...and give me a $120 citation for in-attentive driving!!! DOH!)
I asked if there was anything I could do to fight the injury claim but was told the cost to go to court was way more than just a $5K-$10K settlement and unfortunately this was something which happened far too often!!
I then re-focused on the fact that my car had been sitting there for over a week while I was paying $25 a day - out of pocket - for a rental car! After many apologies on both fronts, Allstate finally sent someone out to look at the car....that Thursday afternoon 12/5. On Friday 12/6 I was told that the insurance paperwork was in order and they could move forward with the repairs.
On the following Wed. 12/11, I (proactively!) got a call from the body shop with news that most of the parts had arrived, but that key structural part was on back-order but should be in by the end of the week. With that news, the estimate for getting my car back was maybe 12/20 if things went well.
So - that is a month to the day of the accident with $500 deductible and $450 in car rentals and insurance picking up $10K.
While I am grateful that I had the insurance to cover this, I am shocked at the sheer cost of repair for a very minor accident, frustrated by the inexperience with this vehicle, and greatly disappointed in my fellow humans taking advantage of the system.
Again sorry for such a long message, but I am desperately missing my car and this thread brought it all to the surface! I am also very sorry to say artsci, but like Aaron I would be shocked if the cost of repairs is less than $20K
