Rear ended by uninsured driver.

[ndhaon91]

A couple questions if anyone has any insights:

1) Any idea of parts/repair turnaround times these days?

2) I've heard from an acquaintance in insurance that they recently totalled out a Model S for a customer on what would have been only about $5000 in repairs. Anyone experience similar to the amount of damage in the photos of my car? (In addition to the obvious visible damage, the metal frame holding the hook that catches the trunk latch has been pushed far enough forward that the trunk latch doesn't even come close to meeting it.)

3) The car is a lease that up in Dec of this year. This question would have been pertinent in a few months anyway: Given wait and build times, when should I start the process of exploring whether I'm going to lease another new Model S? Does Tesla lease out of its pre-owned inventory? I'd love to lease another 2015ish 85D for a fraction of the cost I paid on this one, now that they are 3 years old.

Thanks, all

 

[Az_Rael]

I don't know if they would total it for that amount of damage. I think it starts getting expensive when the rear quarter panel pieces are damaged, which it looks like those may have been spared.

It will also depend on your insurance company. Mine (Ameriprise) took like 2 weeks to figure out my very obviously totalled S was actually totalled. They insisted on getting it evaluated for $40k in repair costs before they pulled the "total" trigger.


Sorry you were hit by an uninsured driver. That always sucks and I hope you were OK.

 

[jeffro01]

Yikes... We had that happen to us in our Model S last summer but the damage was super minor in that only the bumper cover needed to be replaced and it took about a month total from accident to fix. Your car is going to take much, much longer to fix given all that damage... Geico is our insurance company and other than them jacking our rates up at next renewal to the tune of roughly 25% (which is BS considering it wasn't our freaking fault), everything else went well.

Side rant, car insurance is one of the biggest scams out there. Something happens to you due to no fault of your own and they still screw you over at next renewal...

Jeff

 

[BlueRocket]

Yikes... We had that happen to us in our Model S last summer but the damage was super minor in that only the bumper cover needed to be replaced and it took about a month total from accident to fix. Your car is going to take much, much longer to fix given all that damage... Geico is our insurance company and other than them jacking our rates up at next renewal to the tune of roughly 25% (which is BS considering it wasn't our freaking fault), everything else went well.

Side rant, car insurance is one of the biggest scams out there. Something happens to you due to no fault of your own and they still screw you over at next renewal...

Jeff

Gecko sucks

 

[jeffro01]

Gecko sucks

Not from my experience they don't... Super responsive, fast claim response, etc... Even with the increase they're still substantially cheaper than any other quote I've ever gotten. No speeding tickets, no at-fault accidents...

Jeff

 

[ltgfrk]

My wife was hit with very similar damage, perhaps not quite as bad, but in her X. It was 3 moths total, close to 2 of that in the shop. Parts were backordered, your hostage to whatever shop(s) are Tesla certified, etc. The total.....just over $22K. $4k of that were parts, the rest was labor. Funny thing was, it went in as a P90DL and came home as a P85D.

 

[Bebop]

Doesn't the uninsured driver foot the bill? I would imagine that driver would not be walking away from this without any consequences, especially being uninsured.

 

[SSedan]

Yikes... We had that happen to us in our Model S last summer but the damage was super minor in that only the bumper cover needed to be replaced and it took about a month total from accident to fix. Your car is going to take much, much longer to fix given all that damage... Geico is our insurance company and other than them jacking our rates up at next renewal to the tune of roughly 25% (which is BS considering it wasn't our freaking fault), everything else went well.

Side rant, car insurance is one of the biggest scams out there. Something happens to you due to no fault of your own and they still screw you over at next renewal...

Jeff

Insurance got jacked most recent renewal because of all the car claims down south last year with the weather, it may have had nothing to do with the accident.


OP what was the other car? any chance they have assets and can pay for this?

 

[jeffro01]

Doesn't the uninsured driver foot the bill? I would imagine that driver would not be walking away from this without any consequences, especially being uninsured.

Yes and no... Your company will pay for it but then attempt to recover damages from the uninsured party...

Jeff

 

[GatorGuy]

Doesn't the uninsured driver foot the bill? I would imagine that driver would not be walking away from this without any consequences, especially being uninsured.

Of course, but if the driver can't afford insurance they can't afford to fix your car.

 

[ndhaon91]

Insurance got jacked most recent renewal because of all the car claims down south last year with the weather, it may have had nothing to do with the accident.


OP what was the other car? any chance they have assets and can pay for this?

Yeah it's not looking good in that front. 19 year old kid in an old Ford Ranger with existing body damage. And when the cop asked him for his address he pointed to the holiday inn right next to us.

 

[Ande]

Of course, but if the driver can't afford insurance they can't afford to fix your car.

I don't know how it works in US, but normally your insurance would cover it as usual, then it's up to them to squeeze the sucker.
Are you telling it's not like that in US ?

 

[f3honda4me]

In the US you should have liability coverage as well as Underinsured and Uninsured. Your own insurance should cover it.

And I cannot fathom why a Tesla would get totaled out at only 5k in damage. Sounds like a tall tale to me.

 

[Bebop]

In the US you should have liability coverage as well as Underinsured and Uninsured. Your own insurance should cover it.

Let me get insurance to cover someone who doesn’t have insurance, who should not even be driving on the road to begin with without insurance.

Insurance logic in the U.S. Gotta love it.

Especially in this day and age with Uber/Lyft.

 

[Bebop]

Yeah it's not looking good in that front. 19 year old kid in an old Ford Ranger with existing body damage. And when the cop asked him for his address he pointed to the holiday inn right next to us.

What happened exactly?

Were you parked at a red light and this guy came zooming in? Were you in a parking lot?

 

[Shock-On-T]

Must ... resist ... rear-ended pun ...

 

[Naekuh]

Your car is going to take much, much longer to fix given all that damage... Geico is our insurance company and other than them jacking our rates up at next renewal to the tune of roughly 25% (which is BS considering it wasn't our freaking fault), everything else went well.

They raised your rates from a uninsured motorist claim?
WOW, Geico does suck.

Ive had 2 hit and run's on my Benz and AAA has yet to raise anything... but i should note that AAA is probably hella expensive to begin with compared to Geico.

 

[Az_Rael]

They raised your rates from a uninsured motorist claim?

It is state dependent as to wether an insurance company can raise rates for not-at-fault accidents. Some states allow it.

 

[whitex]

Let me get insurance to cover someone who doesn’t have insurance, who should not even be driving on the road to begin with without insurance.

Insurance logic in the U.S. Gotta love it.

Especially in this day and age with Uber/Lyft.

The insurance is to cover YOUR loses that you incur caused by an uninsured motorist. It doesn't cover them. It's purpose is so that you don't have to try to recover your damages from the offender , which can take years, cost money, and often results with nothing if the other party doesn't have anything.

Of course you are always free to save yourself money and not have this coverage, then when your Tesla gets totaled by a drifter without a penny to their name, you can cover your own loses, sue the drifter (after you pay some private investigators to find them), $20K and two years later you get a judgement against the defendant on which you will never collect (since slavery is illegal ).

The other option is to have your own comprehensive insurance cover it as if it was fault, and deal with the claims going to underwriters at your next renewal (with uninsured motorist claim it doesn't) - your rates shoot up and you pay for your damages over time.

 

[whitex]

A couple questions if anyone has any insights:

1) Any idea of parts/repair turnaround times these days?

This really depends on your area, my wife got rear-ended by an uninsured motorist at the beginning of Feb (see more details below) and since there is only one Tesla certified structural body shop (with a single specialist), there was 5 Tesla's in front of us in the queue and it took over 2 weeks to get an estimate. I read a post this week that the same body shop now has 30 Teslas in the queue and the estimated time is 3 months to get an estimate. As for parts and fix times, that also varies wildly, I've heard of people getting their bumper replaced in a week, and some waiting for parts for months.

2) I've heard from an acquaintance in insurance that they recently totalled out a Model S for a customer on what would have been only about $5000 in repairs.

It sounds like an urban legend, no sane insurance company would total a Tesla if they could pay $5K to just repair it. Even with diminished value claim their cost would be so much less than totaling even the oldest Tesla made (first Roadsters). It is more likely that something got lost or distorted (as it usually happens with rumors) and someone lost a 0 ($50K, not $5K) or maybe even the initial "visual" body shop estimate was $5K but later turned out to be $50K. As a point of reference, our car's damage visual estimate was $16.5K and of course the insurance company would not even consider totaling the car. Once the repair shop opened the car up and started adding up internal damage, they stopped estimating at $65K and only at that point the insurance declared it a total loss.

Consider yourself lucky that the uninsured motorist living at the motel stopped long enough for the police to interview him. In our case the driver of the car stopped, stumbled out of the car, heard the word "police", said "I ain't going to jail for this", got in the car and drove away. The police went to the address where the car was registered, she no longer lives there, so the investigation is closed. But here is the important part - if it wasn't for dashcam video (and a kind couple who witnessed the accident and stopped to help, but video always beats witness testimony), we couldn't have proved it was the other person fault. If you look at the video of the accident, you can imagine the exact same outcome if it was my wife who drifted into the other person's lane rather than vice versa. If it wasn't for the video, this would be a collision claim, rather than an uninsured motorist claim. The deductible reduction itself on this accident paid for the dashcams in both of our Teslas, not to mention the rate increase we would have been paying for years.

PS> As a point of reference, our damage was significantly more extensive than yours from your pictures. We had front damage (hit a concrete barrier at 60mph - see top left corner of the video which shows front view of the accident), rear damage, airbags popped, the car was not driveable after the collision (HV battery disconnected, all electronics shut off within few hours).