It was just a little slip – my right foot was resting on the brake as I came to a stop parking the car at my daughter’s house. Due to soil shrinkage, part of her house foundation was exposed and I was travelling uphill. My foot slipped off the brake onto the accelerator and bang, I hit the concrete with the undercarriage of the car.
I checked underneath and couldn’t see anything, but then a few days later, we noticed something hanging down. Sure enough, I had done some damage but everything seemed to work well. The battery did not explode; the car still took off at the lights like a bat out of hell.
Still, we thought we better get it checked and lo and behold I had bent a bracket and it needed to be replaced. You know, the bracket that holds up the flux capacitor.
The point of this article was that the undercarriage of the car took quite a wallop (see pictures) and yet there was no diminishing the car’s performance and no damage to the battery. You worry, with new technology how much it can take, and with all the FUD about batteries, what will happen in an accident.
We’ve all dropped our mobile phones, right. Well, it seems that a Tesla is tougher, much tougher.
In a way, the $622 it cost to fix it was worth it to make me even more confident that my Tesla has what it takes to make it on Australia’s, sometimes rough, roads. I am not encouraging bush bashing or off-roading in a normal Tesla. Please watch where you are going and avoid collisions with house foundations because it will cost you.
The technicians at Tesla were efficient and courteous (no one laughed at my story). The fact that they had the part in stock may mean I wasn’t the first elderly gentleman to do that sort of damage.
David Waterworth is a researcher and writer, a retired school teacher who continues to provoke thought through his writing. He divides his time between looking after his grandchildren and trying to make sure they have a planet to live on. He is long on Tesla.