A Shocking Experience: The High Cost of Repairing a Tesla

I recently had the misfortune of witnessing a fender bender involving a Tesla, and I must say it was a shocking experience. The car, which belonged to an individual who wished to remain anonymous, was involved in a minor accident, but the damage was quite extensive. The rear bumper, rear lamps, and tail lamps were all severely damaged, and the left rear quarter panel needed repairs as well.

The Cost of Repair: A Ridiculous Price Tag

When I asked the owner when the insurance adjuster came out to assess the damage, he replied that there was no insurance adjuster. Instead, he was instructed by a Tesla-certified body shop to send a few pictures of the car over to them via email. The body shop then used these photos to determine how much it would cost to repair the vehicle.

I obtained the actual insurance/body shop report for the repairs, which revealed that the total cost came out to $6,800. This amount included parts and labor, but it's worth noting that a significant portion of this price tag was attributed to a shock absorber that needed to be replaced. The cost of this part alone was $1,800, while the additional materials required for repairs, such as rivets and adhesive, added another $2,000.

However, what really stood out in this report was the labor cost. According to the estimate, the repair would require 78 hours of work at a rate of $125 per hour, resulting in a total labor cost of $9,900. This works out to approximately 20 days of non-stop work if the car were to be repaired four hours a day.

The Implications of High Labor Costs

This experience highlights why Tesla cars can be so expensive to insure. The high labor costs associated with repairs are not only a significant burden for the insurance company but also for the individual who owns the vehicle. In fact, some states have limited service centers and approved body shops, which means that Tesla owners may face extended wait times for repairs.

Furthermore, this situation is not unique to Tesla. A friend of mine, Madula, who lives in Bangladesh, purchased a used Model 3 in 2017 for around $130,000. The TPMS sensor stopped working after a few months, and the HVAC system malfunctioned. Despite multiple attempts to contact Tesla, they refused to send someone to repair his car, citing that it was not covered under warranty.

Madula's experience is just one example of how Tesla's refusal to allow independent mechanics access to their diagnostic software can be detrimental to customers. By withholding this information, Tesla effectively monopolizes the market and limits options for owners who cannot afford or wait for a service center to open.

A Call to Action

In light of these experiences, I believe that Tesla should reconsider its policy of limiting access to their diagnostic software. This would allow independent mechanics to offer genuine repair services, which would ultimately benefit customers like Madula. Additionally, Tesla's decision to make this information publicly available four years ago was a significant step towards making electric vehicles more accessible and affordable.

However, it seems that not much has changed since then. The wait times for repairs are still lengthy, and the lack of support from Tesla is still prevalent. I hope that in the future, Tesla will revisit its policy on diagnostic software access and take steps to make repair services more convenient and cost-effective for owners.

In conclusion, this experience highlights the challenges faced by Tesla owners when it comes to repairing their vehicles. The high cost of labor, combined with limited service centers and approved body shops, can result in extended wait times and significant expenses. I hope that Tesla will take steps to address these issues and make electric vehicles more accessible to a wider audience.

What do you guys think in the comments about this experience? Is it worth buying a Tesla despite the high costs of repair? Share your thoughts, like the video, and subscribe for more content.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey guys rich with rich rebuilds here and I wanted to have a discussion on a Tesla that I ran across that I think some of you may be interested in learning more about but this discussion is gonna be a little bit different instead of talking about photos of a car that we're looking at online we're actually gonna get some seat time in this car to see why it's being sold for so cheap so let me set the stage for you guys early one Saturday my friend called me up and said hey man there's a Tesla for sale that's local to us and he said it was dirt cheap I said how cheap he said under 20k and I said is it on fire he said no it runs and drives minimal damage no airbags went off it just needs some suspension and fender work so let's check this bad boy out for 19k why not I brought my tools with me in my friend's car so we're gonna take a closer look at how easy of a fix this is gonna be so we drive there I show up at the place and this is the gray Tesla sitting in the garage here's what I found so here we are looking at this car it's uh it doesn't look like it's in bad shape at all it's actually really clean I haven't seen this color in quite some time it really doesn't look that bad sorry about the lighting it's I'm in a garage and the garage isn't very well lit but it doesn't look bad let's see let's check out the inside there's nice white interior viously it's an S 85 the floor mats a little dirty but I think those a WeatherTech so that's all right let's just pressure wash those I don't see any deployed airbags the airbags look fine you know there's the airbags and the seats are intact and those are pretty good this is the primary damage right here I want to Jack this car up and I want to take this rear wheel off to see what uh what lies beneath okay they're chatting away that is perfect because I prefer to work alone in silence let's get this backpack alright that's made contact and before I really start cranking away at it I'm gonna loosen these up yeah oh yeah so there's a problem right there oh yeah Wow it's totally shootin up Wow yeah that'll cause a problem yeah see there you go let's snapped right off so that's broken and you also said that well your suspension in the rear yeah the air suspension doesn't stay up it doesn't stay up okay okay so that should that's that could be replaced relatively easily my biggest concern is I want to make sure there's no bends in the in the actual rear subframe itself but I'm not seeing any those links are fine down there it will go up but it will stay up when you drive Oh so meaning it's probably probably leaking I think so yeah yeah that should be replaced - do you have a knife like a butter knife uh-oh ask you odd why would you have one I'm gonna have to tear this off this has to be replaced anyways yeah it's broken I see the coin yeah I'm gonna ride to the front my front tires I hit a deer I hit a dead deer none of them not live but I couldn't get out of the way in the highway and times already all broken I knew how to replace it yeah the whole thing so there's nothing obvious about what well why that's not keeping here but I'll tell you this this up here definitely isn't helping yeah so what I want to do is you take that whole thing off it'll definitely have to be reporting regards yeah have you replaced for sure because well do you think it's a solvable even though that little rip there I think the whole piece actually might be okay Oh honestly it's just cosmetic it's not gonna cause you any yeah here I've you a better show on me I can pull it down there's definitely something to look at there that's not terrible again that's a lot of that's cosmetic but so like why is it not driving straight what do you think is going on is it that toe definitely that link yeah that's what keeps it there's one of the major components keep it straight also I'm not really sure what the status of that so that strut is I don't know if when it got hit maybe some of the screws at the top got dislodged I mean this there's definitely there's definitely more to look at here in order to do a proper repair you'd have to I probably take out the entire braking brake caliper and take off the rotor take off the electronic parking brake and I would remove that that link I remove all the links take the entire thing apart hmm but yeah look if you look at it even with me pushing it does entire thing that's that's a lot of movement in there that should not be like that is this even with a rear-wheel drive car or would it be a hit like this you wouldn't it wouldn't be as prevalent as it isn't a Tesla because in the test of the torque is instant it's instant torque the second you step on the accelerator pedal you're getting all three hundred four hundred foot-pounds of torque so it's gonna twist this easily considering I'm applying very little pressure to this I mean how much could my atomic receptor my foot apply not that my fifty pounds look and then look it's actually flexing well over half so with my car if we took the back wheel off it wouldn't flux at all no absolutely not it's not supposed to do that in the least bit yes when you apply torque to it that's what happens it's gonna turn out that way yeah so you could see everything moving everything look if you look at the suspension even even the shock tower it's even the shock itself yeah is that in fact shouldn't move because that's only supposed to my hand down his movement yeah thing is moving I'll button it back up will go for right okay you could see the wheel moving yeah have you move oh yeah your wheel is flexing yeah and I'm just applying what may be like you know a handful of foot-pounds of torque mm-hmm so imagine four hundred foot-pounds this thing will turn all the way out yep which is what's happening the cars turning left when you exactly now we're gonna button the car back up and take this one for a test drive so let's see so fine I'll give it a little gas not much all right hmm let's see what happens oh you're the left yeah it turns left I'm yeah big time you probably couldn't even go look over 50 miles an hour in this thing well you can go once you go straight like it's fine once you're once you're going it's fine it's just when you accelerate so he actually don't on the highway we do it my way oh yeah did that yeah that was risky right now dad that was a risky move yeah yeah it's fun yeah you can see and if you punch it a little bit more you'll feel it really turn left see it even skids out oh man yeah no that thing if you keep doing that little trick you could rip it off right off absolutely yeah because you need all those points of contact on the suspension because it's obvious they work as one mm-hmm so if you have a weak link you know the other ones get weaker as well so that could be it sounds a ballsy move it's amazing just how one piece that doesn't work affects the entire geometry of the car and I'm willing to bet you even putting that link back in would probably alleviate a lot of the problems now as well as destructive we do it one more time so accelerating getting out and the car wants to go back this way as expected it needs a new shock has a broken suspension link the battery pack is fine it wasn't even touched the car shows no error codes and judging by what I saw from an independent body shop this car can be fixed for I'd say twenty-five to thirty five hundred dollars and far less if you do it yourself rich are you pulling these numbers out of your ass the answer is no there's a Facebook group called Tesla parts buy so trade where a guy is selling the same Fender this car needs for $700 you can get a rear shock on eBay for 300 our rear suspension link for a hundred and a rear bumper for about two hundred dollars and that's it as a matter of fact I have a suspension link and a shock but I will give you to see this car back on the road now you're wondering does the car supercharge a supercharger station was too far away to test the super charging capabilities so I don't know but the car was prompting for an update which means that Tesla didn't shut down the 3G Internet connectivity combine that with the fact that the airbags didn't go off and a distress signal wasn't sent back to the mothership I would say that the supercharger is just fine for now of course until someone from Tesla sees this video so now this is the interesting part you saw the damage yourself why is this car so cheap well let's see how much the insurance company is charging this person to fix this car so I asked the guy when the insurance adjuster came out and here's the kicker he said rich there was no insurance adjuster I'm like what are you talking about he goes he was instructed by the Tesla certified body shop to send a few pictures of the car over to them and they would handle the rest meaning they were able to determine how much this car is to fix just by looking at a few photos via email that were probably taken from an Android phone that was a joke but it just so happens we have the actual insurance / body shop report for a car that neither one has ever seen let's take a look all right here comes the cringefest boys so these are the proxy that needs rear bumper our rear lamps 272 $1 and tail lamps 307 dollar rear bumper lift gate emblems ranging from let's see 50 to $75 we have the air suspension which is $1,800 for one shock the upper control arm - huh the left rear quarter panel is 560 dollars however it needs an additional thousand dollars in rivets and also adhesive to stick it back on so let's see what else we need we need also one wheel and the total price comes to six thousand eight hundred dollars for just parts which is ridiculous because 1100 of that is a rim and you could get four refurbished rims for a thousand and eighteen hundred dollars for a shock that uncle Richard's gonna give you for free but let's get into the hours here and this is why these cars cost so much to insure this fender bender is going to cost seventy eight hours at a hundred and twenty five dollars per hour that's ten grand in just labor over three days of working non-stop that's twenty days if they work on the car four hours a day that's a month not including weekends and guess what that's more like two months if they have to wait for parts and for those months you'll be in a rental car which also costs you insurance company more money and all these factors play into how they determine if your car is worth fixing or not not only that but some states have only a couple service centers and one or two approved body shops so when 10 Tesla's show up at a single shop you can wait over three months that's thirty six hundred dollars and rental cars fees for the insurance companies alone and they don't want to pay that don't forget that a lot of states don't even have service centers so what does that mean so what if you live in a place that has no service center well let me tell you a friend of mine a madula who's in a mechanic bought a model ax for around one hundred and thirty thousand dollars it's a two thousand seventeen P one hundred d he's been driving it for a while now on the TPMS sensor stopped working the hvac isn't working and now it's saying the drive unit needs service he lives in Bangladesh he called Tesla and they will not send someone out to fix his car which was fine because yeah Bangladesh is far from everything and he can't pay any amount of money for diagnostic tools so he has no choice but to shift the car back to Tesla which will take two months to ship it there and two months for him to get it back to him this is part of the reason why I'm fighting to have Tesla allow other mechanics to open up its diagnostic software it's common knowledge that the wait times to get your car fixed can be ridiculous Elon opened up Tesla's patents four years ago the man himself said in order for Tesla to succeed a lot of complementary knowledge and infrastructure needs to be developed auto mechanics need to learn how to repair electric vehicles drivers need to learn to drive and maintain them well here we are four years later and people are still struggling with this and there's still no support that aside I personally think this is a great deal totally worth the buy and the only real risk for this car is what Tesla will do once they find out you fixed your own car let me know what you guys think in the comments about this one and don't forget to Like share and subscribe and I'll see you all soonhey guys rich with rich rebuilds here and I wanted to have a discussion on a Tesla that I ran across that I think some of you may be interested in learning more about but this discussion is gonna be a little bit different instead of talking about photos of a car that we're looking at online we're actually gonna get some seat time in this car to see why it's being sold for so cheap so let me set the stage for you guys early one Saturday my friend called me up and said hey man there's a Tesla for sale that's local to us and he said it was dirt cheap I said how cheap he said under 20k and I said is it on fire he said no it runs and drives minimal damage no airbags went off it just needs some suspension and fender work so let's check this bad boy out for 19k why not I brought my tools with me in my friend's car so we're gonna take a closer look at how easy of a fix this is gonna be so we drive there I show up at the place and this is the gray Tesla sitting in the garage here's what I found so here we are looking at this car it's uh it doesn't look like it's in bad shape at all it's actually really clean I haven't seen this color in quite some time it really doesn't look that bad sorry about the lighting it's I'm in a garage and the garage isn't very well lit but it doesn't look bad let's see let's check out the inside there's nice white interior viously it's an S 85 the floor mats a little dirty but I think those a WeatherTech so that's all right let's just pressure wash those I don't see any deployed airbags the airbags look fine you know there's the airbags and the seats are intact and those are pretty good this is the primary damage right here I want to Jack this car up and I want to take this rear wheel off to see what uh what lies beneath okay they're chatting away that is perfect because I prefer to work alone in silence let's get this backpack alright that's made contact and before I really start cranking away at it I'm gonna loosen these up yeah oh yeah so there's a problem right there oh yeah Wow it's totally shootin up Wow yeah that'll cause a problem yeah see there you go let's snapped right off so that's broken and you also said that well your suspension in the rear yeah the air suspension doesn't stay up it doesn't stay up okay okay so that should that's that could be replaced relatively easily my biggest concern is I want to make sure there's no bends in the in the actual rear subframe itself but I'm not seeing any those links are fine down there it will go up but it will stay up when you drive Oh so meaning it's probably probably leaking I think so yeah yeah that should be replaced - do you have a knife like a butter knife uh-oh ask you odd why would you have one I'm gonna have to tear this off this has to be replaced anyways yeah it's broken I see the coin yeah I'm gonna ride to the front my front tires I hit a deer I hit a dead deer none of them not live but I couldn't get out of the way in the highway and times already all broken I knew how to replace it yeah the whole thing so there's nothing obvious about what well why that's not keeping here but I'll tell you this this up here definitely isn't helping yeah so what I want to do is you take that whole thing off it'll definitely have to be reporting regards yeah have you replaced for sure because well do you think it's a solvable even though that little rip there I think the whole piece actually might be okay Oh honestly it's just cosmetic it's not gonna cause you any yeah here I've you a better show on me I can pull it down there's definitely something to look at there that's not terrible again that's a lot of that's cosmetic but so like why is it not driving straight what do you think is going on is it that toe definitely that link yeah that's what keeps it there's one of the major components keep it straight also I'm not really sure what the status of that so that strut is I don't know if when it got hit maybe some of the screws at the top got dislodged I mean this there's definitely there's definitely more to look at here in order to do a proper repair you'd have to I probably take out the entire braking brake caliper and take off the rotor take off the electronic parking brake and I would remove that that link I remove all the links take the entire thing apart hmm but yeah look if you look at it even with me pushing it does entire thing that's that's a lot of movement in there that should not be like that is this even with a rear-wheel drive car or would it be a hit like this you wouldn't it wouldn't be as prevalent as it isn't a Tesla because in the test of the torque is instant it's instant torque the second you step on the accelerator pedal you're getting all three hundred four hundred foot-pounds of torque so it's gonna twist this easily considering I'm applying very little pressure to this I mean how much could my atomic receptor my foot apply not that my fifty pounds look and then look it's actually flexing well over half so with my car if we took the back wheel off it wouldn't flux at all no absolutely not it's not supposed to do that in the least bit yes when you apply torque to it that's what happens it's gonna turn out that way yeah so you could see everything moving everything look if you look at the suspension even even the shock tower it's even the shock itself yeah is that in fact shouldn't move because that's only supposed to my hand down his movement yeah thing is moving I'll button it back up will go for right okay you could see the wheel moving yeah have you move oh yeah your wheel is flexing yeah and I'm just applying what may be like you know a handful of foot-pounds of torque mm-hmm so imagine four hundred foot-pounds this thing will turn all the way out yep which is what's happening the cars turning left when you exactly now we're gonna button the car back up and take this one for a test drive so let's see so fine I'll give it a little gas not much all right hmm let's see what happens oh you're the left yeah it turns left I'm yeah big time you probably couldn't even go look over 50 miles an hour in this thing well you can go once you go straight like it's fine once you're once you're going it's fine it's just when you accelerate so he actually don't on the highway we do it my way oh yeah did that yeah that was risky right now dad that was a risky move yeah yeah it's fun yeah you can see and if you punch it a little bit more you'll feel it really turn left see it even skids out oh man yeah no that thing if you keep doing that little trick you could rip it off right off absolutely yeah because you need all those points of contact on the suspension because it's obvious they work as one mm-hmm so if you have a weak link you know the other ones get weaker as well so that could be it sounds a ballsy move it's amazing just how one piece that doesn't work affects the entire geometry of the car and I'm willing to bet you even putting that link back in would probably alleviate a lot of the problems now as well as destructive we do it one more time so accelerating getting out and the car wants to go back this way as expected it needs a new shock has a broken suspension link the battery pack is fine it wasn't even touched the car shows no error codes and judging by what I saw from an independent body shop this car can be fixed for I'd say twenty-five to thirty five hundred dollars and far less if you do it yourself rich are you pulling these numbers out of your ass the answer is no there's a Facebook group called Tesla parts buy so trade where a guy is selling the same Fender this car needs for $700 you can get a rear shock on eBay for 300 our rear suspension link for a hundred and a rear bumper for about two hundred dollars and that's it as a matter of fact I have a suspension link and a shock but I will give you to see this car back on the road now you're wondering does the car supercharge a supercharger station was too far away to test the super charging capabilities so I don't know but the car was prompting for an update which means that Tesla didn't shut down the 3G Internet connectivity combine that with the fact that the airbags didn't go off and a distress signal wasn't sent back to the mothership I would say that the supercharger is just fine for now of course until someone from Tesla sees this video so now this is the interesting part you saw the damage yourself why is this car so cheap well let's see how much the insurance company is charging this person to fix this car so I asked the guy when the insurance adjuster came out and here's the kicker he said rich there was no insurance adjuster I'm like what are you talking about he goes he was instructed by the Tesla certified body shop to send a few pictures of the car over to them and they would handle the rest meaning they were able to determine how much this car is to fix just by looking at a few photos via email that were probably taken from an Android phone that was a joke but it just so happens we have the actual insurance / body shop report for a car that neither one has ever seen let's take a look all right here comes the cringefest boys so these are the proxy that needs rear bumper our rear lamps 272 $1 and tail lamps 307 dollar rear bumper lift gate emblems ranging from let's see 50 to $75 we have the air suspension which is $1,800 for one shock the upper control arm - huh the left rear quarter panel is 560 dollars however it needs an additional thousand dollars in rivets and also adhesive to stick it back on so let's see what else we need we need also one wheel and the total price comes to six thousand eight hundred dollars for just parts which is ridiculous because 1100 of that is a rim and you could get four refurbished rims for a thousand and eighteen hundred dollars for a shock that uncle Richard's gonna give you for free but let's get into the hours here and this is why these cars cost so much to insure this fender bender is going to cost seventy eight hours at a hundred and twenty five dollars per hour that's ten grand in just labor over three days of working non-stop that's twenty days if they work on the car four hours a day that's a month not including weekends and guess what that's more like two months if they have to wait for parts and for those months you'll be in a rental car which also costs you insurance company more money and all these factors play into how they determine if your car is worth fixing or not not only that but some states have only a couple service centers and one or two approved body shops so when 10 Tesla's show up at a single shop you can wait over three months that's thirty six hundred dollars and rental cars fees for the insurance companies alone and they don't want to pay that don't forget that a lot of states don't even have service centers so what does that mean so what if you live in a place that has no service center well let me tell you a friend of mine a madula who's in a mechanic bought a model ax for around one hundred and thirty thousand dollars it's a two thousand seventeen P one hundred d he's been driving it for a while now on the TPMS sensor stopped working the hvac isn't working and now it's saying the drive unit needs service he lives in Bangladesh he called Tesla and they will not send someone out to fix his car which was fine because yeah Bangladesh is far from everything and he can't pay any amount of money for diagnostic tools so he has no choice but to shift the car back to Tesla which will take two months to ship it there and two months for him to get it back to him this is part of the reason why I'm fighting to have Tesla allow other mechanics to open up its diagnostic software it's common knowledge that the wait times to get your car fixed can be ridiculous Elon opened up Tesla's patents four years ago the man himself said in order for Tesla to succeed a lot of complementary knowledge and infrastructure needs to be developed auto mechanics need to learn how to repair electric vehicles drivers need to learn to drive and maintain them well here we are four years later and people are still struggling with this and there's still no support that aside I personally think this is a great deal totally worth the buy and the only real risk for this car is what Tesla will do once they find out you fixed your own car let me know what you guys think in the comments about this one and don't forget to Like share and subscribe and I'll see you all soon\n"