A Total Loss Leads to… a Win?
Over 80,000 miles.
What started as a birthday gift from my brother - a new vehicle for safer transportation, with the suggestion that a road trip might be a nice way to travel during the height of the pandemic - turned into road trip after road trip, including Stage I of the Stage IV Tour: New York to Key West in January 2022.
Sleeping on the sand on the Cape Hatteras National Seashore.
The Outer Banks.
Tail of the Dragon in North Carolina and Tennessee.
Edisto Island.
The Florida Keys.
Some of the Great Lakes, including Huron, Michigan, Erie, and Ontario.
Several trips to Chicago.
And ’21 to ’24 Paulie’s Push, as the official media support vehicle four years in a row.
More than 35+ nights spent under the stars in my little climate-controlled sleeping pod.
Sixteen different campgrounds: everything from privately-owned to municipal and state parks and federal lands.
I was in the early planning stages for ‘Stage II: Head West, Young Man!’ when a new driver with a lack of understanding of the need to take turns during a merge caused an accident that would send my ’21 Tesla Model 3 SR+ to the collission shop in October of 2024.
The damage from the accident appeared to be minimal. A dent on the driver’s side rear quarter panel, and a bit of damage to the tire and the door. A similar accident in 2021 had cost around $6K, so I figured that the insurance company’s estimate of just under $3K was low. The adjuster admitted as much, explaining that the shop and the insurance company would go back and forth a few times until they came to an agreement.
EV repairs can be very expensive. This is even more true where Tesla vehicles are concerned, as Tesla is the only producer of parts for the vehicle - they can “name their own price,” Tesla owners will sometimes say. They also have a network of Tesla-approved body shops, and shops outside of that network can find it difficult to work with Tesla.
The shop I chose took one look at the damage and suggested it would be over $10K - and that was before they even pulled the vehicle apart to “really get into it.” A week or so later they called to tell me that they were estimating it at closer to $21K.
My insurance company and the shop did go back and forth several times, but they never did come to an agreement. The sticking point, the shop told me, came to the painting portion of the repair. The insurance company wanted them to start at the area with the dent and work their way forward; the paint manufacturer, and Tesla, demanded that the entire portion of the car be painted. If they followed the insurance company’s recommendation an invisible ‘line’ would be created that later might reveal itself; they wouldn’t do that type of work. The difference in price, they said, was around $7K. The insurance company was deciding whether to declare the vehicle a total loss.
I heard from the insurance claims adjuster the next week. He let me know that I’d “gotten a lot of use out of that vehicle” - and that the mileage of 80K was part of the reason they’d decided that it was too costly to proceed with a repair. Instead they had estimated the book value of the vehicle at around 21K, and would be cutting me a check for that amount.
When I had initially purchased the vehicle my insurance broker had recommended that I add Traveler’s “Premiere New Car Replacement” to my policy. This coverage, which I’d estimate adds about $300/year to the total cost, provides for the full replacement value of the vehicle if it’s declared a total loss in the first five years of ownership. When I reminded the insurance adjuster that I had this coverage, he told me that another person from the company would be in touch to discuss that part.
The final portion of the claims process involved that person working with a company that evaluates the value of cars based on sale prices in the area you live in. This took 1-2 weeks, despite Telsa values being the same nationwide. Regardless, in the end the company decided that I was entitled to an additional $25K toward the purchase of a new car. This actually provided me with more than I was expecting, but no complaints here. I had my new Tesla Model 3 less than a week later.
I’ve heard that “Premier New Car Replacement” is no longer available to new insureds, but I’ve also seen something that suggests that, as long as someone pursuing new insurance with Travelers can show that they purchased the car new within the past five years, they may be able to get the coverage. I can’t recommend it enough, since EV repairs (and, particularly, Tesla repairs) are so expensive, and the chance of a Tesla being declared a total loss so high in the face of declining book values and exorbitant costs for repairs.
