Sentry Mode catches door dinger and saves me $1000.

[Aieukl378]

I hope you are not serious about acting on the $1,004 repair estimate, as the body shop is trying to get lucky by pushing for a paint respray job.

Door dings can be easily and completely removed with paintless dent repair (PDR) for $50-100 per body panel. Doors are the easiest to work on.

Other than cost savings, PDR preserved original paintwork, so the paint on all your doors will match, and age at the same rate. It's very easy to tell which body panels were repainted a few years after the respray, and your used car value will be dinged accordingly.

a

The other driver's insurance is covering the cost so non issue. They're a Tesla certified shop and have done exemplary work for me before.

 

[banned-66611]

I don't understand the logic behind backing into parking spots to get the front camera to (maybe) record license plates of cars parking next to you as they pull in.
1. This would require said cars have front license plates installed if pulling in, or that they back in themselves
2. Even if I just pull in normally to park, wouldn't my rear-facing side repeater cams record the front license plate of any car pulling in next to mine? Or are you saying the angle is too narrow?

It's a mystery why Tesla doesn't use the rear and the front wide angle camera for sentry mode.

Tip for door dingers: Wait at least 10 minutes after the ding before driving off to avoid having your number plate captured by Sentry Mode.

Maybe Tesla could add licence plat recognition so it can automatically snapshot all the ones it sees. Single video frames wouldn't take up much space.

 

[TjckTock]

If you've ever set up a stationary motion detect camera, you know you have to block out various sections of the frame to indicate where trees blowing in the wind, public roads, etc can cause false triggers. Sentry has a tougher problem since the camera has a new setting each time. Noone wants to have to go through the setup required to configure what areas are acceptable for motion in all cameras each time they park. So really the only solution at this time is a larger drive and periodic drive maintenance.

 

[Cholcomb]

I hope you are not serious about acting on the $1,004 repair estimate, as the body shop is trying to get lucky by pushing for a paint respray job.

Door dings can be easily and completely removed with paintless dent repair (PDR) for $50-100 per body panel. Doors are the easiest to work on.

Other than cost savings, PDR preserved original paintwork, so the paint on all your doors will match, and age at the same rate. It's very easy to tell which body panels were repainted a few years after the respray, and your used car value will be dinged accordingly.

a

Actually with the model 3 the doors are aluminum, if there is a crease they have to replace it.

Not sure if that is the case with this one but I have seen this on youtuber’s that have had to get the cars repaired.

 

[banned-66611]

Actually with the model 3 the doors are aluminum, if there is a crease they have to replace it.

Not sure if that is the case with this one but I have seen this on youtuber’s that have had to get the cars repaired.

No wonder the insurance is higher.

 

[afadeev]

Actually with the model 3 the doors are aluminum, if there is a crease they have to replace it.

Not sure if that is the case with this one but I have seen this on youtuber’s that have had to get the cars repaired.

The doors are aluminum, but your inference is wrong - aluminum panels can be PDR-ed just as well as steel panels. Aluminum does required a slightly different approach, but PDR can still deliver perfect results.

Aluminum has been used in cars for decades (I had a friend do PDR work on his NSX in the 90s), and Ford's F150 has kindly been providing plenty of aluminum PDR repair practice for the techs since 2015.

Nice aluminum PDR video here:

HTH,
a