I know, i know. This is Reuters, but what do you all make of this in the long term?
Teslas are expensive to repair — so much so that insurers are writing off low-mileage cars, and Elon Musk says Tesla is trying to address the problem.
www.autoblog.com
They wrote off our Model Y, right at peak value, and paid peak value
Tesla insurance won't do that, but it is a lower rate.
Per a qualified body shop in Tempe, there were 2 sensitive spots on each side - right behind the front tire, and in front of the rear tires. A strike there can cripple these but more so on the driver's side with power cables which introduce safety concerns and liability in the repair.
Ours was an early Y (no single rear castings that I'm aware of), so don't know how the new castings hold up today, but likely this was precisely an example of what Tesla meant in using repair cost to influence product design (in addition to FSD/safety to prevent it). The best accident is no accident (followed by the "close calls" just for the data).
One cost problem I saw was that their parts were not kitted for an efficient rear hatch replacement (different MYP). That $10K process involved a $1K hatch then the body shop had to swap all other parts from the old hatch, including the glass. Then there are 11 versions of white paint out there (this could be the bumpers or whole cars, not positive). So it needed paint and blending, plus we pulled the bumper on ours to also paint it (discolored bumpers are common).
So in order to get that improved, lots would need to change on the spares and kitting side, along with tighter specs on bumper and body paint IMO. Oh, it was slow-mo backed into a tree that was leaning out into the parking lot. Crumpled the spoiler and area was all, frame was fine. It's nicer now actually, I don't know how they matched the paint so well. It was feathered into the rear QPs extremely well, better than new.