A few days back a truck turned in front of me in traffic and dragged the side of his vehicle over the front of mine, ripping off my bumper cover, denting my fender and doing other minor damage. It wasn't the end of the world. I zip tied the bumper back on the car and was on my way.
Today I went to get a quote from a Tesla certified body shop. The quote came back as... wait for it.... $10,900. Eleven THOUSAND dollars. I wasn't expecting it to be cheap but $11,000? Holy hell. Knowing Tesla's body repair parts are some of the cheapest in the industry I inquired as to where the cost was coming from and was told that because it's a Model S it's considered exotic. He also gave me a song and dance about it being aluminum and that costing more but my car needs no sheetmetal repair. It just needs one fender removed and another bolted on. It's not like they're welding in a new quarter panel.
To qualify the following statements I should note that I've owned two performance companies, am intimately familiar with the workings of cars in general and have owned a salvage Tesla which afforded me the opportunity to get to see many of the bits that most don't. With respect to this kind of damage, the S is a car like any other. My car needs the following:
Bumper cover ($400 new)
Parking sensor harness ($100)
Driver's side fender ($300)
Lower valance
Radiator Support (could actually get by without replacing this)
2 x parking sensors
On the used market I could pick up everything for about $1000, pay a shop $700 to paint it and have it looking like new and I'm not even in the body repair industry. All the parts in need of replacement are simple to remove and re-install. This would not be a half assed repair. Since we've now got years of used Teslas around, one could theoretically find used, same color body panels and skip the paint work altogether, potentially getting out the door for a full repair at a cost of about $1000. Would the panels match exactly? LIkely they'd be close enough, depending on the environment the donor car was in, that all but the most discerning of people wouldn't be able to pick out a difference in the shade of color.
I say this because the topic of salvage cars has come up here before and a lot of people have taken the hard line approach that if a car is salvaged it's junk. Here's a minor accident with an $11,000 price tag that could realistically be fixed for a 5th of the first repair estimate. It's no wonder we're seeing a sudden influx of salvage Teslas.
Today I went to get a quote from a Tesla certified body shop. The quote came back as... wait for it.... $10,900. Eleven THOUSAND dollars. I wasn't expecting it to be cheap but $11,000? Holy hell. Knowing Tesla's body repair parts are some of the cheapest in the industry I inquired as to where the cost was coming from and was told that because it's a Model S it's considered exotic. He also gave me a song and dance about it being aluminum and that costing more but my car needs no sheetmetal repair. It just needs one fender removed and another bolted on. It's not like they're welding in a new quarter panel.
To qualify the following statements I should note that I've owned two performance companies, am intimately familiar with the workings of cars in general and have owned a salvage Tesla which afforded me the opportunity to get to see many of the bits that most don't. With respect to this kind of damage, the S is a car like any other. My car needs the following:
Bumper cover ($400 new)
Parking sensor harness ($100)
Driver's side fender ($300)
Lower valance
Radiator Support (could actually get by without replacing this)
2 x parking sensors
On the used market I could pick up everything for about $1000, pay a shop $700 to paint it and have it looking like new and I'm not even in the body repair industry. All the parts in need of replacement are simple to remove and re-install. This would not be a half assed repair. Since we've now got years of used Teslas around, one could theoretically find used, same color body panels and skip the paint work altogether, potentially getting out the door for a full repair at a cost of about $1000. Would the panels match exactly? LIkely they'd be close enough, depending on the environment the donor car was in, that all but the most discerning of people wouldn't be able to pick out a difference in the shade of color.
I say this because the topic of salvage cars has come up here before and a lot of people have taken the hard line approach that if a car is salvaged it's junk. Here's a minor accident with an $11,000 price tag that could realistically be fixed for a 5th of the first repair estimate. It's no wonder we're seeing a sudden influx of salvage Teslas.
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