Fixing collision damaged vehicles is a profit center. They'll bill your insurance for every tangentially related maintenance item they'd been putting off (the belt is _obviously_ squeeky because the collision loosened the tensioner, the brakes are worn down because the emergency stop was too aggressive, the windshield fluid won't come out because the shock knocked a wire loose in the electric pump, ...). The car comes out in better shape than it went in.

Counter-point: I rent cars fairly frequently and over the past 30 years I've had three damaged. Case 1 windshield hit by rock and cracked. Case 2 creased driver door via grey pillar in gray colored underground parking lot. Case 3 semi truck with those pointy front wheel nuts max-maxed my passenger door with them. In all three cases the outcome was positive. No excess charges or shenanigans.

otoh Hertz have twice billed me for damage I definitely did not cause. In one case for a scratch on the front air dam that you had to lie down under the vehicle to see (which their agent in fact did when I returned the car). So now I use Avis.

That pales in comparison to the charges for lost income they claim they would have received from the car while it was out of service.

90% of their fleet at that location might sit unused for a week or more, and most of their rentals are steeply discounted from the standard rate - but that car you backed into a pole? Why, that one would have been earning them the standard rate, every day.

Does that still apply in the case of rental car companies that self insure?

In the US, you (and transitively your insurance) are liable as a driver if you cause damage. You can separately have a contract assigning that liability (e.g., the $20/day or so a rental company will often offer to waive basically all physical damage to the car at a $0 deductible). I assume it's that latter sort of thing you're referring to?

I'm not sure how they handle cars damaged under those sorts of policies. I do know those policies are also wildly profitable (I've never come close to approaching eqv. $7300/yr for insurance, despite a horrible driving record when I was younger). Rental cars don't even crash 1.5x as often per mile, so a 5-20x multiple on your premium is noteworthy.

If you rent cars frequently, consider getting a credit card that includes free collision damage waiver and loss-of-use coverage for rental cars.

The coverage you buy from the rental company is a massive rip-off, that's why credit cards can offer it for free as a perquisite.

Most regular cars can still be driven after a (minor) collision, they might need some work to fix them up but usually they are fine. If you're ok with mostly cosmetic damage or replacing a body panel, then it's a great buy.

A Tesla after a minor collision might disable itself entirely until inspected by a Tesla technician, and it might need a whole new (and very expensive) battery pack - no one would(or should) take a bet on such a car.

So it's a lot less attractive thing to buy over regular cars.

Teslas do not "disable themselves"; it's done by Tesla HQ, using criteria they do not disclose, but it seems to be just a matter of whether the crash happens to come to their attention.

Rich Rebuilds has covered this extensively. Sometimes he comes across a heavily damaged Tesla, still on their network that hasn't been disabled. Other times he comes across one with minor damage that has been disabled. I believe one of his rebuilds, he took some of the guts from a heavily damaged car that wasn't deactivated to transplant into the guts of a car that had easily repaired damage that had been.

Interesting - it was my understanding that most collisions(and definitely collisions that activate airbags) cause the car to disable itself until inspected. Good to know that this isn't always the case.

I've never heard this being the case, and I sure hope it isn't for most cars. Imagine being in a remote area.. you hit a deer after slowing down.. and now you're trapped at night? You're in death valley offroading a little too enthusiastically, airbags deploy and now you're stuck? A small fender bender in Baja Mexico and you're disabled?

I once rolled a vehicle in Nevada being stupid with friends. Airbags deployed. The radiator was crushed and leaking. We strapped the radiator support to another vehicle and bent it back out. Took the other vehicle into town and bought a radiator at AutoZone. Installed it and drove it an hour home. The steering wheel was only slightly off center.

> Teslas do not "disable themselves"; it's done by Tesla HQ

That’s the same thing. If the owner isn’t disabling the car, then it is disabling itself.

Hire cars in the UK often have a long list of already-known dents and scrapes. You have to be super careful and check the car over to spot any others so you don’t end up paying for prior damage. But all those dents have been paid for by previous renters; the hire company charges the renter but doesn’t actually fix the damage…