• kotaKat a day ago

    I half-thought about one of these just to have something to rip around in.

    Until a colleague in a Model Y hit a turkey and the very minor front end damage turned into a $9000 insurance claim.

    I don't want to buy a $20k used Tesla and immediately run into a 4-5 figure repair as soon as one minor thing goes horribly wrong, even with insurance.

    • bhhaskin a day ago

      That's pretty much any new car today. Modern cars are pretty safe, but at the expense of damage to the car itself.

      • indemnity 18 hours ago

        We had a minor 10 km/h collision in my wife’s SUV (non-Tesla). To me it looked like it would just be a minor bumper respray and realignment of some panels.

        Unfortunately the parking sensors were damaged too, so it’s a few grand to repair.

        • grugagag a day ago

          For a frontal collision with a larger object maybe this true but with a turkey? It seems the dammage is a bit excessive for that

          • esperent a day ago

            It depends how fast the turkey was going when it hit you.

            • steve_adams_86 a day ago

              Not to mention what it was travelling in. SUVs are absolute tanks these days.

              • mcpeepants a day ago

                too many gas gobblers on the road these days

        • nunez a day ago

          That doesn't sound right. Maybe they got a very cheap insurance policy with ultra high deductibles for collision and UMP. That would be a $1500 job for me, at most.

          • kotaKat a day ago

            Nah, not when it takes out one of the headlights and they've gotta swap in the brand new matrix headlights on both sides to replace them, plus the big unibody front bumper, plus misc sensors...

            Apparently parts availability also forced unintentional upgrades.

            • jerlam a day ago

              Is this specifically because Teslas can only repaired by the dealer? They aren't rare cars and presumably there are many in junkyards that can be stripped for parts.

              • seanmcdirmid 16 hours ago

                Not too many teslas in junkyards yet. And they don't have dealers.

                • Schiendelman 15 hours ago

                  Teslas can be repaired at many body shops. Mine has.

            • yourapostasy a day ago

              My US friends share with me that car repair costs have followed inflation and not general population wage growth (unfortunately, mechanics other than independent mechanics likely aren't seeing a commensurate increase in invoice bottom lines). Unless you wrench it yourself, on some vehicle like an old 80-90's diesel pickup, 4 figures invoices are common now.

              • qazxcvbnmlp a day ago

                Switching to a 15 year old pickup that I could repair myself was the single best financial choice I made in the past 2 years.

                • nozzlegear 16 hours ago

                  How often do you need to repair your vehicle? I bought a new car at the end of 2022 and haven't had to bring it into the shop at all except to get some new tires, and I've put 30k miles on it so far.

            • barrystaes a day ago

              This page is ridden of ads, popups, and sensational writing. They may be facts but its written as clickbait filler to scroll past even more ads.

              Clicking the back button redirects me to a never-seen-before and full-screen Ad page before returning to Hacker News.

              I am never visiting insideevs.com again. If this is real news, a real news website shall report it.

              • dscottboggs a day ago

                Amazing what a difference uBlock origin has, I didn't notice at all.

                • cnst a day ago

                  This is why I started using a DNS ad blocker. It's not that I hate ads, it's simply that I use more than one tab, and my Apple Silicon doesn't have enough RAM and processing power to keep rendering the ever-changing ads in all the tabs.

                  It is a little ironic that these EV sites have some of the most annoying ads, including all those video rolls on every page, wasting an immense amount of power.

                  • malshe a day ago

                    Can you please provide more details about the DNS ad blocker? I don't know anything about it but it sounds intriguing.

                    • jdeibele 15 hours ago

                      People will mention PiHole and that's a neat solution if you want to maintain a server.

                      If you don't, https://adguard-dns.io/en/public-dns.html lets you point your DNS servers at AdGuard and let them block ads for you. No maintenance required.

                      One caveat: once in a while, like maybe once a year, my wife or I encounter a site that AdGuard blocks and we need to set our DNS back to "normal" for things to work. But you'll probably have the same issue with PiHole, which relies on lists of spammers or other undesirables.

                      PS: no relationship with AdGuard other than happily using their service.

                      • longitudinal93 a day ago
                        • fhfjfk a day ago

                          see pihole, et al.

                      • rchaud a day ago

                        While blogspam sites are a symptom of web publishing's race to the bottom, "actual news" sites are pretty much indistinguishable when it comes to ads and popups.

                        • catlikesshrimp a day ago

                          They license the story everywhere. Only everywhere is also plagued by Spam

                          https://www.msn.com/en-ie/money/other/hertz-s-tesla-fire-sal...

                          Just get firefox with ublock origin

                        • greatgib a day ago

                          When they announced that they will buy 100k despite being in a dire financial situation a few years ago, I knew that it would be an epic failure for them. Looks like to be confirmed.

                          But 2 other things shock me in this story: First that the cars are still valued at 20k despite being a little bit old and used for rental when you know that like expectancy of Tesla is not that long without costly repairs.

                          Second, even if I'm not an American tax payer, is that the gov will give back 4k if you buy one, supporting the effort of this company to recoup their loss despite them totally not deserving it.

                          • nunez a day ago

                            The EV tax credit applies to all manufacturers, not just Tesla.

                            • rasz 14 hours ago

                              Herts did Tesla play to rally its own stock.

                              • plagiarist a day ago

                                Massive handouts to corporations that neither need nor deserve them is one of the few things our government can be relied on for.

                                At least this one is not direct. This one seems like an unfortunate consequence that it's hard to give out any subsidy without benefiting some large business.

                              • wiradikusuma a day ago

                                Some questions:

                                1. Can't Hertz's sue Tesla to get "cashback" or something? Mom and Pop can only stare helplessly, but surely a bigco can demand something?

                                2. Link from "We'll let you be the judge" gives a strong impression that ex-Hertz's _Teslas_ are problematic, but can "Tesla" be omitted and it's still the same? (Meaning, nothing to do with Tesla or EV, just "ex-Hertz's are bad").

                                • nunez a day ago

                                  This really blows for me, as EVs are all I rent when I travel. (We have two EVs at home.) I get it, though. Most travelers want gas cars; they are familiar and easier to refuel.

                                  That said, I can definitely confirm that it is way harder to rent a Tesla (or any EV) on Hertz than before. Avis still has a good inventory of them, though.

                                  • seanmcdirmid 16 hours ago

                                    When you rent a car to go to Glacier national park, an EV is going to work out better for you. We are still a bit behind on charging infrastructure out here in the west.