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Total Loss or repair

  • Total Loss

    Votes: 33 63.5%
  • Repair

    Votes: 6 11.5%
  • Too close to call

    Votes: 10 19.2%
  • It'll buff out..

    Votes: 5 9.6%

  • Total voters
    52
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Your comment lifts my spirits, however many people suggest the high value may work against it. May I ask what year yours was, and the milage? Also.. any pics you have?? I'd really appreciate it for comparison. Our also had previous repairs on it (other accidents we weren't at fault for, but would have devalued it somewhat).

2020 LR AWD. 5 Months old. 1500 miles.

They still totaled it.

I can’t share photos at this time. Damage was way less and seemed notable but not that major. Was was on and running afterwards.
 
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2020 LR AWD. 5 Months old. 1500 miles.

They still totaled it.

I can’t share photos at this time. Damage was way less and seemed notable but not that major. Was was on and running afterwards.
Thanks for sharing that info, much appreciated. If you think you can share photos in the future, please let me know. It might be something we can use as an example when dealing with our insurance company. Thanks again!
 
My wife had an almost new Volvo that slid off the road on black ice. Our insurance estimated $15,000 US to repair. We called the Volvo dealer and asked them where they recommended we get it repaired. We had it towed to the body shop and the estimator confirmed that there was structural damage and the repair cost would exceed the $38,000 cost of the car. It was then considered totaled.

Try having a Tesla certified repair shop do an estimate. It's much more expensive to repair a Tesla than it is a steel body car with more standard structural components.

Good luck on this.
 
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Sad to hear. Especially since the more they get into this for the more that’s just going to crop up and cost even more; but they’re commuted at that point.

Going with your own shop or whatever shop the insurance company is using?

Make sure you go over EVERYTHING when it’s done. I would have consider taking it to a pro shop afterwards, at your costs, to go over it with a fine tooth comb to find anything they missed and it taken care of ASAP while you can still claim it was the repair.
 
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My wife had an almost new Volvo that slid off the road on black ice. Our insurance estimated $15,000 US to repair. We called the Volvo dealer and asked them where they recommended we get it repaired. We had it towed to the body shop and the estimator confirmed that there was structural damage and the repair cost would exceed the $38,000 cost of the car. It was then considered totaled.

Try having a Tesla certified repair shop do an estimate. It's much more expensive to repair a Tesla than it is a steel body car with more standard structural components.

Good luck on this.
Thanks for sharing your experience. The body shop is Tesla approved. They are also the only ones within a towable area. We'll see what it's like when we get it back, however we've already heard from people that they wouldn't buy a car with that much damage done to it, regardless of how good the work is. A couple months ago a friend heard of our plans to sell it and upgrade to a different model and said they'd love to buy our car (private sale can get more than trade in sometimes) but now they wont even consider it. Teslas don't depreciate as much compared to other vehicles - if they are clean with no major accidents - and especially the ones with FSD. So ours just lost what it had going for it I guess.
 
Sad to hear. Especially since the more they get into this for the more that’s just going to crop up and cost even more; but they’re commuted at that point.

Going with your own shop or whatever shop the insurance company is using?

Make sure you go over EVERYTHING when it’s done. I would have consider taking it to a pro shop afterwards, at your costs, to go over it with a fine tooth comb to find anything they missed and it taken care of ASAP while you can still claim it was the repair.
The insurance company guarantees all repairs (not sure how, guess we'll find out), but only for as long as we own the car - not if we sell it, so there goes it's appeal to buyers. The bodyshop is meant to be very good (it's the only Tesla certified one in a towable area anyway).
 
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How much is the repair bill? What are they replacing exactly?
I'm going to update with more detail, but maybe at the end of it all? I don't know the implications of posting it all online as it happens now that legal counsel is going to be involved. We've got the repair estimate and all the parts ordered. We'll be asking for more things along the way. The insurance company is also going to provided their numbers - so how they came to the conclusion that it's worth repairing ie: ACV/valuation minus salvage, then whether the repairs would cost close to that number. There are also many other things that factor in that they probably wont tell us about like what they've already paid for towing, storage, assessment, rental car etc. The longer it goes on, the more committed they are like @jeremymc7 said.
 
I had read somewhere once that if the battery case is warped or damaged it's pretty much an automatic write-off. Any deformity to the battery pack means you have no guarantee whether the batteries are still good without opening it up to look, and who's qualified to judge whether the damage is compromising? There's a few videos available of removing the 3's battery pack, but it generally means major disassembly, plus a lot of professional manual labour - so by the time they pay for that (and the chance of replacing the pack) it's simpler to write it off.

I'm impressed if the 3 took that heavy a crash without bending the battery case.

I don't get it - the other car passed you on the left, so his passenger side should have been totally crushed? You said it was a backwards (RHS Japanese) drive, so the damage should have been to the driver's side for him? What did I miss - did he carrom off and hit a post or something? And I assume the video at nigh will show the lighting from your signal, so he should have known you were turning left. Very not-too-smart maneuver.
 
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I had read somewhere once that if the battery case is warped or damaged it's pretty much an automatic write-off. Any deformity to the battery pack means you have no guarantee whether the batteries are still good without opening it up to look, and who's qualified to judge whether the damage is compromising? There's a few videos available of removing the 3's battery pack, but it generally means major disassembly, plus a lot of professional manual labour - so by the time they pay for that (and the chance of replacing the pack) it's simpler to write it off.

I'm impressed if the 3 took that heavy a crash without bending the battery case.

I don't get it - the other car passed you on the left, so his passenger side should have been totally crushed? You said it was a backwards (RHS Japanese) drive, so the damage should have been to the driver's side for him? What did I miss - did he carrom off and hit a post or something? And I assume the video at nigh will show the lighting from your signal, so he should have known you were turning left. Very not-too-smart maneuver.
Hmm.. thanks for that point about the battery. If they didn't open it up, how can they know it's ok? More things to follow up on Monday. The video shows our indicator on for a very decent amount of time, then he just zooms up out of nowhere. His car was totalled. His front right corner hit out front left side. The left side of his car then took out fence posts, then it spun around and the right side hit the ditch. Once this is all sorted, I will post pics and dash cam footage. There may be legal things ahead for the kid so I'm being mindful of not sharing evidence online just right now.
 
Honestly I still think this should be a total loss.

I would think getting 3-4 other estimates. Unfortunately I think most shops will under quote to get a job. But maybe if they knew it was insurance maybe give a higher quote.

But I think OP said there is only one shop available?
I think I will now request them to look at the battery by opening it up.. @MD-2000 is right, how can they know unless they look? I guess we could get it towed to another place to look at, that would be very costly, it's a couple hours and a ferry to the nearest Tesla certified place, but maybe it's worth it. The body shop knows we have total insurance, but we wouldn't expect them to make a higher estimate so it gets totalled, plus yeah... maybe they may want the work. We wouldn't want them to over quote though, it could risk everything, possibly even have the insurance refusing to cover repairs if they found out. The whole thing sucks. The biggest lesson here is having to advocate for ourselves. We've just found plenty of proof that the insurance company here does acknowledge accelerated depreciation and people have been successfully compensated in court, they just don't share that information, you have to go searching and get good legal advice. But we will look into the battery thing too.
 
I hate to say it in this litigious country.

BUT I think you need to take an accident lawyer on retainer. You’ve only get 1/3 of the payout but it will offset the loss in value that your insurance isn’t helping with.

See your dr ASAP. Get X-rays, ct scans, and mri scans. See your Chriopratier.

Keep track of all time hours and event spent dealing with this. Loss of wages. Loss of time of work. Co pay or better yet cash payment outside insurance.
 
2020 LR AWD. 5 Months old. 1500 miles.

They still totaled it.

I can’t share photos at this time. Damage was way less and seemed notable but not that major. Was was on and running afterwards.
I've gone back through this thread, and maybe I'm missing it so apologies if you've already mentioned this but what was the repair estimate on your car, and do you know what the valuation was?
 
I guess we could get it towed to another place to look at, that would be very costly, it's a couple hours and a ferry to the nearest Tesla certified place, but maybe it's worth it.

You may have to front this out of pocket. But it’s going to be minimal. If you have AAA they should cover it. But I’m not sure if they make exception for accident related cars that are already off the road.

Just keep track of every cost, pain, travel event. Other party is obviously at fault. You have a lawyer involved or should. The more paperwork you have the better.

Most of the is most go to court unless you’re looking for a huge payday. All insurance companies and lawyers have systems that tell them how much they are willing to payout. Which as mentioned lawyer will get 1/3, medical will get 1/3, and you get a 1/3. If you use insurance and pay co pays you will get less then paying cash. Ideally at new dr will no history of your prior medical and telling them it’s accident related and paying full pass price. Most dr will just keep a rolling tab going until it’s settled.
 
I've gone back through this thread, and maybe I'm missing it so apologies if you've already mentioned this but what was the repair estimate on your car, and do you know what the valuation was?

There was no repair estimate. They just totaled it. Comps for car were higher than new and that’s what they paid me, more than it costs me. Plus I got to claim rebates/credits on second car so
Even more in my favor. With COVID ramping up again I thought it might *sugar* down factory again and increase comps for you like as in my case; but no factory shutdown this time even though California is indeed going into lockdown yet again.
 
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I hate to say it in this litigious country.

BUT I think you need to take an accident lawyer on retainer. You’ve only get 1/3 of the payout but it will offset the loss in value that your insurance isn’t helping with.

See your dr ASAP. Get X-rays, ct scans, and mri scans. See your Chriopratier.

Keep track of all time hours and event spent dealing with this. Loss of wages. Loss of time of work. Co pay or better yet cash payment outside insurance.
We are consulting legal counsel and have a few more things to do on our end to gather information before we begin a legal battle. The insurance works differently here. There's just one state run insurance company (that's been running a deficit for a while now). The medical stuff gets handled differently. We saw a doctor the next day as we woke up with the beginning of very bad whiplash (which got worse over the first week). We have been seeing practitioners (chiro/massage/acupuncture) because we've struggling with headaches and neck and shoulder pain. Even if we wanted to, we wouldn't be able to exaggerate things, it would eat us up and stress us out. We are pretty "soft" when it comes to that - we can't lie, but we also can't even exaggerate! We think we have a very good chance for proper compensation for the vehicle though, it's been an illuminating week of information gathering and I hope to share the results on here. I will be speaking about getting the battery checked though, and that may send it back into the total loss category.
 
You may have to front this out of pocket. But it’s going to be minimal. If you have AAA they should cover it. But I’m not sure if they make exception for accident related cars that are already off the road.

Just keep track of every cost, pain, travel event. Other party is obviously at fault. You have a lawyer involved or should. The more paperwork you have the better.

Most of the is most go to court unless you’re looking for a huge payday. All insurance companies and lawyers have systems that tell them how much they are willing to payout. Which as mentioned lawyer will get 1/3, medical will get 1/3, and you get a 1/3. If you use insurance and pay co pays you will get less then paying cash. Ideally at new dr will no history of your prior medical and telling them it’s accident related and paying full pass price. Most dr will just keep a rolling tab going until it’s settled.
I'm not sure what co pays are. All our medical expenses are paid for, we are in Canada and also have good private health cover as well as the insurance company covers 3 months of therapies of your choice. Right now it looks like a good lawyer will get us the depreciation amount.
 
Btw I’m talking about exaggerating or lying.

Just document everything and be careful.

The reason I say things like use new doctors instead of regular doctors is insurance companies and lawyers will use any excuse to reduce, eliminate or blame for. They can use something in your medical file from 5 or 10 years against you and the whole thing is out the window.

You want fair, responsible, and just compensation; not excessive or payday.

I TOTALLY get the stress part. Which is why when I got a call from an injury attorney from the other party within 3 hours I promptly ignored it. The other party never even called their insurance (which they didn’t have as they didn’t even have a license, EVER!). So I called my lawyer and said here’s all the details. I don’t want to talk to anyone else, you handle everything. Which they did and are. I haven’t had to talk to my insurance since reporting the accident, never talked to the other lawyer, never talked to the other insurance, or even the other party. Within hours my lawyer had talked to the police and pulled the footage from my car, the intersection, and surrounding business since it might get erased after a day/week/etc.

It may still be open over 6 months later but I have a new and updated car thanks to a Tesla, nothing out of pocket, actually a few Thousand in pocket, and lawyer / insurance handling all the stress for me. Thank goodness.
 
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